RATIVE  EXERCISES 


OF  THE 


FORTIETH  ANNIVERSARY 
OF  THE  PRESIDENCY  OF 

JAMES   K.  PATTERSON 

STATE  UNIVERSITY  OF  KENTUCKY 
FRIDAY,  JUNl  1,  lt09. 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


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^  Addresses  delivered  at  exercises  in  commemora- 

,^  tion  of  the  forty  years'  service  of  President  James 

^'  Kennedy    Patterson,    as    President   of   the    State 

il.  University  of  Kentucky,  held  on  the  University 

campus,  on  June  1st,  1909,  from  4  p.  m.  to  7  p  m. 

o'clock. 

^  Judge  James  H.  Mulligan  presided  at  the  exer- 

0  cises. 

Eev.  David  W.  Moffatt,  D.  D.,  pastor  Emeritus 
First  Presbyterian  Church,  of  Fort  Wayne,  Ind.,. 
o  opened  the  exercises  by  prayer. 

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451843 


J^rngram 


Judge  James  H.  Mulligan,  Presiding. 
University  Glee  Club. 

SPEAKERS 
Governor  Augustus  E.  Willson,  Frankfort,  Ky. 

Judge  Henry  S.  Barker, 

Of  the  Kentucky  Court  of  Appeals, 

Louisville,  Ky. 

Hon.  Cassius  M.  Clay, 

Of  the  Board  of  Trustees, 

Paris,  Ky. 

Rev.  David  Wm.  Moffatt,  D.  D., 

Pastor  Emeritus  First  Presbyterian  Church, 

Fort  Wayne,  Ind. 

Hon.  Jerry  Sullivan, 

Member  of  Board  of  Regents  of  Eastern  Ky.  Normal 
School,  Richmond,  Ky. 

Rev.  Charles  Lee  Reynolds,  D.  D., 

Pastor  Second  Presbyterian  Cliurch, 

Lexington,  Ky. 

Rev.  Joshua  B.  Garrett, 

Professor  of  Greek,  Hanover  College, 

Hanover,  Ind. 

Dean  William  T.  Capers, 

Christ  Church  Cathedral, 

Lexington,  Ky. 

Dr.  Arthur  Yeager, 

President  of  Georgetown  College, 

Georgetown,  Ky. 


Professor  Henry  H.  Cherry, 

President  of  the  Western  Ky.  Normal  School, 

Bowling  Green,  Ky. 

Rev.  Richard  Henry  Crossfield,  D.,  D., 

President  of  Transylvania  University, 

Lexington,  Ky. 

Rev.  Isa.\c  J.  Spencer,  D.  D., 

Pastor  of  Central  Cliristian  Church, 

Lexington,  Ky. 

Dr.  F.  W.  Hinett, 

President  of  Central  University, 

Danville,  Ky. 

Rev.  Edwin  Muli.er,  D.  D., 

Pastor  First  Presbyterian  Church, 

Lexington,  Ky. 

Professor  John  T.  Faig, 

University  of  Cincinnati, 

Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

Virgil  Y.  Moorf.,  University  Student. 

Alpha  Hubkard,  University  Student. 

Professor  James  G.  White, 

State  University, 

Lexington,  Ky. 

RESPONSE 
President  James  Kennedy  Patterson. 


Professor  William  B.  Smith,  Ph.  D., 
Of  Tulane  University, 

New  Orleans,  La. 


Contents! 

Address  of  Judge  Mulligan 9 

Address  of  Governor  Willson 14 

Address  of  Judge  Barker 17 

Address  of  Hon.  C.  M.  Clay 23 

Address  of  Rev.  D.  W.  Moffatt 37 

Address  of  Hon.  Jerry  Sullivan 32 

Address  of  Rev.  C.  L.  Reynolds 35 

Address  of  Rev.  J.  B.  Garrett 38 

Address  of  Dean  W.  T.  Capers 41 

Address  of  Dr.  Arthur  Yager 43 

Address  of  Prof.  H.  H.  Cherry 46 

Address  of  Prof.  J.  T.  Faig 53 

Address  of  Dr.  Hinett 57 

Address  of  Rev.  Edwin  Muller 60 

Address  of  Rev.  I.  J.  Spencer 63 

Remarks  of  Mr.  V.  P.  Moore 67 

Address  of  Mr.  Alpha  Hubbard 70 

Remarks  of  Prof.  Jas.  G.  White 73 

President  Patterson's  Reply  76 

An  Appreciation — W.  B.  Smith,  LL.  D 83 


labtirefis;  of  STutige  UJuHigau  in  0ptn\nQ 

Our  Honored  Guest,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — 

3N  the  course  of  a  life  time  which  is  beginning 
to  touch  where  the  shadows  fall,  I  have 
by  chance  unworthily  been  the  recipient  at 
times  of  honors  far  beyond  my  merit;  but  I  wish 
to  say  as  briefly  as  possible  that  never  in  my 
career  have  I  been  so  keenly  and  sensibly  touched 
as  has  been  done  in  giving  me  the  honor  of  pre- 
siding on  this  momentous  occasion. 

Forty  years  is  a  long  span  in  one's  affairs.  Forty 
years  of  continuous  endeavor,  of  ceaseless  labor 
and  travail,  forty  years  crowned  at  every  step  by 
the  triumph  of  great  things  accomplished,  is  some- 
thing very  unusual. 

At  the  outset  I  might  say  that  when  I  secured 
by  close  competition  the  honor  of  presiding  over 
this  meeting  it  was  with  the  distinct  understanding 
that  I  should  make  no  speech.  Therefore,  in  view 
of  the  shortness  of  the  time,  while  you  will  be 
beautifully  and  eloquently  entertained — touchingly 
entertained,  if  you  fail  to  hear  what  you  consider 
a  really  great  oration,  lay  it  to  the  door  of  those 
who  so  restricted  me  on  this  occasion. 

This  is  a  unique  occasion,  such  an  one,  I  dare  say, 
as  none  present  ever  attended  before — celebrating 
forty  years  of  continuous  service  in  a  great  and  a 
noble  work.    Forty  years  marked  at  every  step  by 

9 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

willing  sacrifice,  marvelous  ability,  and  what  is 
greater,  forty  years  almost  without  friction,  or 
without  friction  worthy  of  mention,  and  crowned 
at  last  by  the  great  success  which  rests  on  the  head 
of  the  guest  of  to-day.     (Applause.) 

Surely  a  man  must  not  only  be  a  great  man, 
but  he  must  be  better  than  that — he  must  have 
been  a  good  man  who  could  so  follow  the  even 
tenor  of  his  way,  continually  rising  higher  and 
higher  with  every  step — and  yet  think  of  it!  this 
man  came  from  Indiana.  He  must  be  a  very  good 
man.  He  is  unquestionably  that,  and  it  needs  no 
words  of  mine  to  say  that  he  is  a  very  great  man,  to 
have  accomplished  that  which  President  Patterson 
has  accomplished.  President  Patterson  did  not  of 
himself  alone  build  the  State  University,  but  I 
speak  the  simple  truth  when  I  say  that  had  it  not 
been  for  President  Patterson  there  would  have  been 
no  State  University.  President  Patterson  is  as  much 
the  maker  of  this  college  as  is  Mr.  Carnegie  of  any 
of  the  great  institutions  which  he  ever  endowed. 
During  the  forty  years  that  he  has  been  the  in- 
cumbent of  this  office,  I  have  watched  its  growth. 
I  well  remember  when  Governor  Blackburn  laid 
the  corner-stone,  and  when  two  years  later 
the  brilliant  Watterson  made  the  dedicatory  ad- 
dress, and  so  I  have  seen  it  under  his  fostering 
care,  under  the  influence  of  his  great  common 
sense  and  his  powerful  intellect  grow  up  to  what 
it  is  now,  and  yet  he  is  but  looking  forward  to 
what  it  will  be  in  the  years  to  come.  (Applause.) 
If  there  was  ever  a  man  who  erected  a  noble 
monument  by  his  life's  work  which  entitles  him 
to  a  lasting  place  in  the  hearts  of  his  fellows^ 
10 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

surely  it  is  the  loyal  man  who  has  accomplished 
this  great  work.  Great  for  you;  great  for  the 
generation  to  come,  and  great  for  your  children 
after  you. 

For  twenty-five  long  years  of  that  forty  he  and 
I  have  been  the  closest  neighbors.  We  have  lived 
all  through  that  span  of  life  nearer  to  each  other 
than  either  was  to  any  other  person. 

Here  comes  not  only  good  men,  but  great  men ; 
here  come  men  from  Indiana,  his  boyhood  friends, 
after  the  span  of  a  life  time — coming  here  to 
clasp  his  hand  and  to  congratulate  and  to 
take  part  in  honoring  him  here  to-day.  Surely  a 
man  must  be  a  good  man  who  can  have  his  boy- 
hood friends  to  come  such  a  distance  at  such  a 
time  to  do  honor  to  his  theme. 

There  was  once  a  Kentuckian  traveling  in  Indi- 
ana, and  he  fell  into  conversation  with  a  gentleman 
who  seemed  to  be  in  very  sad  health,  and  the  Ken- 
tuckian let  it  be  known,  as  Kentuckians  are  prone 
to  do,  that  he  was  from  Kentucky,  and  after  a  time 
he  turned  to  his  chance  acquaintance  and  re- 
marked: "I  suppose  of  course  that  you're  an 
Indianian  ?"  "No"  said  the  man,  "I,  too,  am  a 
Kentuckian,  but  then  I  have  been  sick  for  a  long 
time."  And  so  the  tried  friends  of  his  youth, 
like  him  grown  in  strength  and  character  and 
reputation — in  everything  showing  ability,  show- 
ing virtues,  and  showing  all  those  marked  quali- 
ties that  make  men  conspicuous  and  great,  they 
come  from  their  distant  homes  to  take  their  places 
by  his  side  to  give  contradiction  to  those  who  say 
the  friendships  of  our  youth  are  but  fleeting;  and 
so  we  have  with  us  to-day  the  friends  of  the  morn- 

11 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

ing  of  his  life;  and  what  stronger  proof  could 
be  asked  that  he  is  a  genuinely  good  man,  as  well 
as  a  very  great  one  when  these  hale,  learned  and 
distinguished  men — though  Indianians  they  be — 
gather  around  him  to  join  those  prominent  in  the 
life  of  our  own  immediate  community  and  its  citi- 
zenship to  do  honor  to  the  guest  of  this  occasion. 
Surely  it  is  well  worth  a  life-time  of  labor  and  sac- 
rifice to  receive  such  an  honor  and  distinction  as 
this.     (Applause.) 

(At  this  point  the  Glee  Club  of  the  College 
rendered  a  selection.) 

By  reference  to  the  programme  it  will  be  seen 
that  it  is  extremely  lengthy;  there  are  twenty-two 
addresses  to  be  made.  Having  myself  taken  up  a 
good  proportion  of  the  time,  I  regard  it  as  only 
modest  that  I  should  say  to  those  who  are  to  ad- 
dress you,  that  when  there  is  so  much  they 
know  how  to  say  so  well,  that  we  will  take  the 
will  for  the  deed ;  we  ask  the  gentlemen  to  remem- 
ber that  we  know  how  beautifully  and  how  well 
they  all  speak — and  so  a  little  of  it  for  this  occa- 
sion will  suffice.  This  is  said  with  a  sense  of  jus- 
tice that  all  may  to  our  advantage  be  heard — 
because  this  great  audience  is  anxious  to  hear  every 
gentleman  whose  name  appears  on  the  programme, 
and  hence  I  venture  to  ask  that  you  favor  us  with 
your  shortest  address.  My  remarks  are  directed 
mainly  towards  the  first  speaker — Governor  Will- 
son — because  he  is  apt  to  be —  well,  just  a  little 
long,  sometimes.  As  we  are  unprovided  with 
lighting  facilities  and  cots,  we  greatly  desire  to 
conclude  during  the  lingering  day-light,  and  so  I 
again  renew  the  request. 

12 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

The  distinguished  gentleman  I  have  the  honor 
first  to  present  to  you,  needs  no  introduction — he 
is  the  first  officer  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  surely 
it  is  a  proud  day  when  the  young  man  who  came 
in  the  unaided  days  of  his  youth  from  our  sister 
state  of  Indiana,  and  whose  growth  was  by  little 
and  little  through  such  arduous  toil  and  endeavor, 
now  comes  at  last  in  his  mature  manhood  and 
fullness  of  reputation,  to  receive  this  ovation, 
as  a  fitting  acknowledgment  of  his  worth,  that 
the  best  and  greatest  in  position  in  the  State 
gather  to  do  him  honor;  the  honored  of  the 
land  are  glad  to  honor  him.  I  have  the  pleas- 
ure to  present  to  you  His  Excellency,  Augustus  E. 
Willson,  Governor  of  Kentucky. 


13 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 


^htixta^  of  #ot)ern0r  ?B2ltU0on 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  and  our  Honored  Guest — 

/9fr^  HAT  would  you  do  about  it,  if  you  were 
£1  in    my    place?      Judge    Mulligan    an- 

^^^  nounced  that  he  had  accepted  this  nomi- 
nation as  Chairman  of  this  meeting  with  the  un- 
derstanding that  he  would  leave  all  the  speaking 
to  somebody  else.  Well,  of  course,  people  make 
promises  of  that  kind  to  get  office.     (Laughter.) 

He  has  put  more  ginger  and  more  fun  and 
more  eloquence  and  more  picturesqueness  into 
his  talk  than  all  the  rest  of  us  can  do  in  the  after- 
noon, and  so  I  am  not  going  to  try.  When  the 
boys  were  singing  that  humming  song  I  thought 
of  what  Mulligan  said,  that  I  must  not  speak 
more  than  two  minutes. 

Now  there  was  a  little  thing  came  to  my  mind ; 
it  is  curious  how  a  real  flashy,  brilliant  orator 
sometimes  puts  his  foot  in  it.  There  was  just  a 
little  jealousy  in  Mulligan's  talk  about  Indiana. 
The  Governor  of  Kentucky  was  a  resident  of  the 
State  of  Indiana  from  1857  to  1878,  but  I  never 
let  it  out  before.  It  was  a  mean,  unneighborly 
thing  for  Mulligan  to  say  he  was  not  going  to 
.?peak,  and  then  talk  for  a  half  hour  and  shut  the 
re>^t  of  us  out. 

My  neighbors  and  friends,  it  is  an  honor  to 
anybody  to  have  an  opportunity  to  pay  this  neigh- 
borly tribute  and  this  human  tribute  of  respect 
to  a  man  whose  noble  life  has  been  given  to  use- 

14 


Pres.  J  as.  K.  Patterson. 

fulness  and  to  good  works.  I  feel  very  deeply 
what  Judge  Mulligan  said  about  the  character  of 
a  man  wlio  to  a  ripe  old  age  holds  the  friends  of 
hi?  boyhood,  as  this  our  friend  has  held  his  friends 
here.  They  honor  us  by  showing  their  love  to 
him  by  their  presence  here.  1  do  not  know  in  the 
history  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  certainly  I 
do  not  remember  in  my  reading  of  the  history  of 
men,  a  single  case  that  I  could  think  of  now  as 
more  striking  in  its  record  of  a  long  tremendously 
hard-working  life  of  usefulness  than  the  life  of 
our  friend.  I  do  not  wish  what  I  say  to  take  on 
an3'thing  of  the  tone  of  a  good-bye  or  a  funeral. 
He  is  cheerful ;  he  is  bright ;  he  is  earnest ;  his 
eyes  shine  as  clearly  as  they  ever  did;  and  if  you 
think  he  has  lost  the  facility  for  saying  in  a  real 
strong  way,  with  a  strong  clear  head,  you  have 
not  talked  with  him  lately.  I  believe,  to  put  it 
stronger,  I  am  dead  sure,  that  his  determination 
was  never  so  stout.  It  may  be  improper  to  use 
the  word  "stout"  with  reference  to  his  determi- 
nation, but  I  do  not  know  of  any  other  word  that 
will  fit  it  so  well.  I  say,  he  never  was  more 
earnest;  he  never  was  more  useful;  he  never  was 
more  greatly  beloved  and  admired  and  highly 
regarded  in  every  way  than  he  is  today;  and  in 
the  full  strength  of  wisdo7n,  great-hearted  kind- 
ness, tremendous  industry,  his  canny  Scotch  com- 
mon sense,  and  American  common  sense,  he  iff 
at  his  greatest  today.  But  it  is  not  what  we  say 
today ;  of  course,  I  cannot  say  it ;  but  it  is  what  is 
shown  here,  what  each  one  feels  today.  I  am  only 
a  short  acquaintance  of  President  Patterson's. 
Many  of  you  are  his  old  acquaintances;  many  of 

IS 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

you  his  students;  but  there  is  not  a  soul  here 
today  who  does  not  have  this  feeling  about  this 
man  that  he  is  worthy  of  the  love  of  his  fellows; 
that  he  is  worthy  the  distinction  of  having  a 
great  multitude  of  honest,  thoughtful,  earnest, 
sensible  people  feel  in  their  very  heart  the  way 
you  feel,  and  I  feel,  and  everybody  knows,  of  the 
usefulness  of  President  Patterson,  and  you  cannot 
?ay  anything  that  adds  to  that;  you  cannot  think 
of  anything  that  adds  to  it. 

The  greatest  question  in  all  life  is,  what  shall 
be  thought  of  us  hereafter;  what  is  the  record 
where  the  accounts  are  finally  kept?  But  the 
next  thing  dearest  to  the  human  heart  is,  what 
do  the  people  who  know  us  think  about  us?  Do 
they  think  this  man  is  earnest,  honest,  wise,  faith- 
ful ;  his  word  ringing  true  every  day  ?  They  will 
forget  his  little  combativeness ;  they  will  look  upon 
it  as  an  evidence  of  strength  and  not  weakness; 
sometimes  hard-headedness ;  but  they  won't  forget 
his  constant,  sincere,  honest  effort.  They  like  you 
and  like  you  in  every  way.  We  are  your  friends ; 
we  honor  the  memory  of  your  past  work,  and  we 
honor  you  still  while  you  are  with  us. 


16 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


3futise  Parkers!  ^dbrrsia 

^£  COULD  well  have  wished  that  both  the 
^1  duty  and  the  responsibility  of  speaking  for 
^^  the  Trustees  on  this  occasion  had  been  com- 
mitted to  abler  hands  than  mine.  But  while  not 
feeling  at  liberty  to  decline  the  compliment  which 
the  imposed  duty  brings,  I  find  myself  embar- 
rassed at  the  very  threshold  by  my  personal  rela- 
tions to  the  distinguished  subject  of  the  honors 
we  wish  to  bestow.  My  affection  for  President 
Patterson  has  been  of  such  long  standing  and  of 
so  sincere  a  character  that  any  eulogy  I  may  be- 
stow upon  him  will  almost  assume  the  complexion 
of  a  compliment  to  myself. 

I  met  the  President  for  the  first  time  when  I 
matriculated  as  a  student  in  the  A.  &  M.  College 
in  1870.  From  that  time  to  this  we  have  been 
friends.  In  looking  back  over  this  long  period 
and  fully  realizing  all  that  I  owe  to  him,  it  is  a 
great  honor  to  me  that  during  all  this  time  I 
have  had  the  right  to  call  him  friend.  In  1870, 
the  A.  &  M.  College  occupied  and  owned  that 
magnificent  estate  known  as  Ashland  and  Wood- 
land, on  the  opposite  side  of  the  city.  The  great 
Civil  War  had  been  closed  but  a  few  years,  and 
the  South  was  still  prostrate  from  its  ravages.  In 
the  general  wreck  of  the  great  struggle  there  had 
gone  down  all,  or  nearly  all,  of  her  educational 
institutions.  The  result  was  that  many  of  her 
young  men  had  come  up  to  the  College,  allured  by 

17 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

the  hope  of  being  able  to  labor  during  a  part  of 
each  day  at  such  remuneration  as  would  enable 
them  to  maintain  themselves  at  school  during  the 
remainder.  There  was  a  very  large  part  of  the 
student  body  composed  of  these  young  men  from 
the  South.  They  hailed  from  the  Carolinas  to 
Texas ;  they  were  as  fine  and  manly  a  set  of  young 
men  as  one  could  wish  to  meet.  I  mention  this 
fact  as  introductory  to  a  statement  I  wish  to  make 
concerning  the  relations  between  the  students  and 
the  President.  In  all  the  time  I  was  at  the  A.  & 
M.  College  I  never  heard  a  student  speak  disre- 
spectfully of  the  President;  they  all  loved  and 
admired  him;  and  as  I  now  remember  the  situa- 
tion, I  do  not  believe  they  would  have  submitted 
to  anything  which  savored  of  disrespect  to  him 
whom  they  loved  so  well  and  in  whom  they  had 
such  implicit  confidence.  The  boys  I  knew  here 
from  '70  to  '73  are  now,  if  living,  long  past  the 
heyday  of  life.  They  are  scattered  to  the  four 
winds  of  heaven.  Occasionally  it  is  my  good  for- 
tune to  meet  one  of  them,  and  always  the  first 
inquiry  is  for  news  of  the  President. 

During  the  period  I  was  here,  the  A.  &  M. 
College,  although  a  State  institution,  was  a  part 
of  Kentucky  University,  which  was  then,  as  now 
(though  its  name  has  been  changed),  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Christian  Church.  Shortly  after 
I  left  school,  under  the  influence  of  a  disagree- 
ment between  the  University  and  the  State,  the 
union  was  dissolved  and  the  State  College  was 
established  as  an  independent  institution,  and 
was  located  upon  its  present  site.  The  legislature 
of  Kentucky  granted  the  College  a  small  and  very 

18 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

inadequate  annual  tax  for  its  support.  This  was 
the  occasion  for  the  jealous  animosity  of  every 
sectarian  school  in  the  State,  and  soon  the  young 
institution  found  itself  an  educational  Ishmaolite 
against  which  the  hand  of  every  sectarian  was 
raised  in  hate.  It  seemed  to  a  mere  spectator  that 
the  feeble  hantling  thus  cast  upon  the  rock  of 
adversity  must  surely  perish;  and  perish  it  would 
hut  for  the  loyal  courage  of  one  man — its  Presi- 
dent. In  the  courts,  in  the  halls  of  the  General 
Assembly,  in  the  columns  of  the  press,  and  on  the 
hustings,  he  met  and  vanquished  all  opposition. 
He  literally  lifted  up  the  moribund  institution 
which  seemed  about  to  expire  from  the  anaemia 
of  starvation,  and,  holding  it  close  to  his  own 
great,  loyal  heart,  warmed  it  back  into  vitality 
and  life.  When  I  look  upon  these  heautiful 
grounds,  nearly  every  tree  of  whose  lawns  he 
planted  with  his  own  hands;  when  I  behold  these 
buildings,  every  brick  of  which  was  cemented  by 
his  anxiety  of  heart,  it  seems  to  me  as  if  the  now 
splendid  institution  should,  in  its  gratitude,  find 
a  voice,  and  in  the  language  of  the  great  Scotch 
bard,  say  of  its  benefactor: 

"The   bridegroom    may    forget   the   bride 

Was  made  his  wedded  wife  yestreen; 
The  Monarch  may  forget  the  crown 

That  on  his  head  an  hour  has  been ; 
The  mother  may  forget  the  child 

That  smiles  sae  sweetly  on  her  knee; 
But  I'll  remember  thee,  Glencairn, 

And  a'  that  thou  hast  done  for  me!" 

In   the  first   law   suit,   instituted  more  than 
thirty  years  ago,  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  a 

19 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

judgment  declaring  the  tax  for  the  benefit  of  the 
A.  &  M.  College  unconstitutional,  I,  then  an  un- 
fledged law3^er,  had  the  honor,  without  fee  or  re- 
ward, to  in  part  represent  the  interests  of  the 
school.  The  fight  then  begun  lasted  in  the  courts, 
in  the  General  Assembly,  in  the  Constitutional 
Convention,  until  within  twelve  months  last  past, 
it  has  been  finally  settled  by  the  Judgment  of  the 
court  of  last  resort  in  the  State  that  the  Legisla- 
ture has  the  right  to  make  any  appropriation  to 
the  College  it  deems  proper  for  its  maintenance. 
I  shall  always  remember  with  pride  that  I,  who 
thus  began  my  career  as  a  lawyer  trying  to  uphold 
the  right  of  the  legislature  to  support  the  State 
College,  had  the  honor,  as  a  Judge  of  the  Court 
of  Appeals  of  Kentucky,  to  aid  in  establishing  by 
final  adjudication  the  State's  constitutional  right 
to  maintain  this  great  institution  for  the  educa- 
tion of  its  young  men  and  women.  It  will  always 
be  a  gratification  to  me  to  recall  that  during  all 
of  this  "thirty  years'  war"  between  the  forces  of 
learning  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  forces  of  igno- 
rance and  its  twin  sister,  prejudice  against  public 
education,  on  the  other,  that  I  have  faithfully 
followed  as  an  humble  private  in  the  footsteps  of 
the  great  captain,  to  whom  we  owe  the  final  vic- 
tory. For  to  him  more  than  to  any  other  man  in 
the  State  we  are  indebted  for  the  final  public 
adoption  of  the  statesman-like  policy  that  the 
government  owes  it  as  a  duty  to  its  youth  that 
they  shall  be  educated,  and  for  the  legislative 
recognition  of  the  economic  principle  that  every 
dollar  spent  for  education  is  more  than  equal  in 
value  to  ten  dollars  laid  out  for  the  suppression 

20 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

of  pauperism  and  crime.  President  Patterson  has 
all  his  life  been  an  educator  of  youth;  and  in  se- 
lecting this  vocation  he  chose  wisely  and  well.  It 
seems  to  me  that  there  can  be  no  nobler  secular 
calling  than  that  of  teacher :  all  others  make  most 
for  the  things  of  this  world;  but  this  makes  for 
eternity  as  well.  The  teacher,  who  takes  a  human 
soul  and  inspires  it  with  the  divine  thirst  for 
knowledge,  puts  in  motion  an  instrumentality  for 
higher  things  whose  usefulness  will  only  have  be- 
gun when  the  fountains  of  the  sun  have  been 
quenched,  and  the  stars  have  withered  on  the  face 
of  the  firmament.  As  compared  with  knowledge, 
all  other  acquisitions  seem  base  and  sordid.  The 
man  who  acquires  money  enriches  only  himself, 
and  what  he  gets  he  deprives  others  from  securing ; 
the  man  who  obtains  office  serves  only  his  own 
ambition,  and  disappoints  others  who  desired  the 
same  promotion ;  but  the  man  who  acquires  knowl- 
edge takes  nothing  from  his  neighbor,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  adds  to  the  common  fountain  from 
which  all  may  draw  who  will.  He  enriches  him- 
self, indeed,  but  he  enriches  as  well  all  who  come 
within  the  radius  of  his  influence.  Knowledge, 
like  mercy,  "is  twice  blessed :  it  blesseth  him  that 
gives  and  him  that  takes." 

In  conclusion,  it  gives  us  pleasure  to  honor  the 
President,  who  is  just  closing  up  a  long  and  use- 
ful professional  life.  He  has  been  faithful  to  all 
the  obligations  which  come  with  the  possession  of 
'splendid  abilities.  He  has  discharged  to  the  full- 
est measure  the  great  trust  involved  in  his  life's 
work.  He  has  never  faltered  in  or  swerved  from 
the  path  of  rectitude,  or  "paltered  with  us  in  a 

21 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

double  sense."  Of  him  we  may  say,  as  Carlyle 
said  of  Cromwell,  *'He  feared  God,  but  he  feared 
no  one  else."  His  whole  life  is  a  guaranty  that 
his  daily  prayer  has  in  spirit,  at  least,  been  that 
of  the  mariner  of  old,  who,  about  to  launch  his 
frail  bark  upon  the  treacherous  sea,  cried  out: 
"Oh,  Neptune !  I  pray  you  to  smile  upon  my  voy- 
age; but  whether  you  blow  me  fair,  or  whether 
you  blow  me  foul,  I  will  hold  my  rudder  true." 


22 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


^tihvtfia  of  lion.  C.  ill.  Clap 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen  and  our  Guest — 

^£  WISH  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  that 
jl  Judge  Mulligan  could  make  my  speech,  and 
^^  that  I  did  not  have  to  make  any.  When  I 
accepted  this  invitation,  the  only  reason  why  I  did 
so  was  because  I  felt  so  deeply  interested  in  our 
President,  and  was  willing  to  add  whatever  I  could 
to  this  occasion  in  a  few  words. 

I  am  an  evolutionist  and  consequently  I  am 
no  hero-worshiper,  but  I  cannot  contemplate  the 
history  of  this  institution  for  the  last  forty  years, 
its  beginning  in  nothing,  and  its  gradual  expan- 
sion to  its  present  harmonious  development,  and 
contemplate  the  obstacles  that  had  to  be  over- 
come, both  internal  and  external,  but  what  1,  an 
evolutionist,  must  acknowledge  that  its  destinies 
have  been  directed  and  controlled  by  a  master 
mind.  In  the  beginning,  this  college  received 
meagre  endowment  from  the  sale  of  public  lands 
under  the  Morrill  Act.  President  Patterson  ap- 
preciated that  unless  State  aid  was  given  to  higher 
education,  this  college  would  never  amount 
to  anything.  At  that  period,  you  will  recollect, 
those  of  you  who  are  old  enough,  that  there  was 
no  public  sentiment  to  amount  to  anything  in 
favor  of  State  aid  to  higher  education.  President 
Patterson  felt  that  the  very  existence  of  the  Col- 
lege depended  upon  the  creation  of  a  public  sen- 
timent  in   the    State   of   Kentucky   in   favor   of 

23 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

hii^hei  education,  and  he  immediately  addressed 
himself  with  all  of  his  great  powers  of  mind  and 
energy  to  create  and  educate  such  a  public  senti- 
ment. He  did  this  by  addressing  the  taxpayers 
tlirough  the  State,  agricultural  bodies  through 
the  press,  and  every  session  of  the  Legislature 
foimd  him  a  constant  attendant,  urging  and  im- 
pressing upon  the  members  of  the  Legislature  the 
•great  necessity  for  their  doing  something  for  high- 
er education  in  the  State  of  Kentucky  through  en- 
dowment and  appropriations  to  the  State  College. 
He  was  opposed  in  this  by  the  jealousies  of  the 
various  denominational  institutions  of  the  State, 
as  Judge  Barker  has  said,  some  taking  much  more 
part  than  others;  and  then  he  was  opposed  by  the 
conservative  inertia  of  the  Legislature,  naturally 
economical,  because  composed  always  of  a  majority 
of  farmers,  who  were  naturally  indisposed  to  in- 
crease taxation;  and  after  a  very  strenuous  fight 
he  passed  his  first  bill — appropriating  one-half  of 
one  cent  on  every  $100  of  taxable  property  in  this 
State  for  the  benefit  of  this  institution.  This  bill 
was  followed  by  other  appropriations,  generally 
for  the  purpose  of  building  certain  buildings  upon 
these  grounds.  In  some  cases  not  only  had  Presi- 
dent Patterson  to  address  himself  to  the  Legisla- 
ture on  the  question  of  public  sentiment  to  get  the 
Legislature  to  act  in  favor  of  the  legislation,  but 
he  had  to  bring  to  bear  upon  the  Governor  every 
possible  reason  pressing  for  the  bill.  And  then  I 
have  seen  him  have  to  fight  for  these  bills  both 
on  the  ground  of  policy  and  on  the  constitution- 
ality of  the  bills;  and  I  myself  have  seen  him 
pitted  against  one  of  the  very  ablest  lawyers  this 

24 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

State  has  ever  produced,  and  the  universal  opinion 
of  the  audience  that  heard  that  argument  was 
that  the  lawyer  had  not  gotten  the  better  of  it. 
So  all  along  the  line  he  has  fought  and  educated 
and  developed  such  public  sentiment  as  was  nec- 
essary for  the  maintenance  of  the  institution,  and 
regulated  the  internal  growth  of  the  institu- 
tion by  his  great  sagacity,  by  his  judgment,  by 
his  wide  and  accurate  scholarship,  his  knowledge 
of  the  classics,  philosophy  and  history,  in  such 
a  manner  as  to  give  it  the  high  standing  which 
it  has  and  deserves. 

Some  one  has  said  that  the  history  of  the  laws 
of  a  country  are  a  good  summarized  history  of 
the  nation — of  the  country.  In  the  same  way  some 
one  has  said  that  even  the  dictionary  of  a  country 
was  a  good  summarized  history  of  the  country.  In 
the  same  way,  with  emphasis,  I  may  say  that  the 
history  of  this  college  for  the  last  forty  years  is  a 
good  history  in  a  brief  summarized  way  of  the 
public  life  and  services  of  President  Patterson. 
(Applause.) 

I  have  been  associated  with  him  in  the  Board 
of  Trustees  now  for  several  years,  and  what  I  am 
about  to  say  I  can  speak  from  personal  knowledge. 
In  all  my  little  political  life,  which  does  not 
amount  to  much,  I  have  been  thrown  with  great 
and  brilliant  men.  I  was  in  the  Legislature  with 
Preston,  Williams,  Blackburn  and  many  others, 
and  I  want  to  say  that  I  have  never  been  thrown 
in  association  with  a  man  that  had  better  use  of 
pure,  direct  English  than  President  Patterson. 
He  is  always  terse  and  direct  in  statement,  but 

25 


Fortieth  Annxversary. 

whenever  it  was  necessary  he  could  always  draw 
"upon  the  whole  realm  of  human  knowledge  in  apt 
illustration. 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  am  no  flatterer;  I  be- 
lieve in  stating  what  I  honestly  believe;  I  believe 
that  today — that  this  very  day,  considering  both 
manner  and  matter — President  Patterson  is  the 
best  public  speaker  in  Kentucky. 

Now,  in  conclusion,  I  want  to  express  the  pro- 
found hope  and  wish  that  many  years  of  useful- 
ness and  happiness  may  be  extended  to  you,  and 
that  you  may  live  to  see  this  college — your  child 
and  offspring — although  it  is  great  now,  expanded 
into  ft  much  more  vigorous  manhood,  giving, 
through  the  support  of  Kentucky,  still  greater 
usefulness  and  education  to  our  people.  (Ap- 
plause.) 


26 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


i^bbresftf  of  l^th,  Babib  Wm,  MoUatt,  30.5®. 

Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen — 

/9^f^  0  borrow  an  Hibernianism  if  I  had  been 
§1  born  in  my  native  country  I  should  have 
^■■^  been  born  in  Indiana,  but  not  being  con- 
sulted over  matters  in  those  days  I  was  born  in 
New  Jersey,  and  when  I  was  less  than  a  year  old 
was  carried  by  my  parents  to  Madison,  Ind.  My 
earliest  recollections  are  of  my  home  on  one  of 
those  stately  hills  and  beautiful  hills,  which  look 
down  on  the  city,  and  ten  miles  of  the  Ohio  River 
and  of  the  Kentucky  and  Indiana  hills  and  valleys. 
There  I  became  well  acquainted  with  and  warmly 
attached  to  a  boy  whom  I  called  "Jimmie"  and 
who  called  me  '"Davie,"  this  latter  fact  testifying 
that  we  were  then  not  big  boys.  Afterwards  to- 
gether we  used  to  go  down  that  big  hill  every 
morning  to  school  in  the  city,  and  every  evening 
climb  it  again  to  sleep  together  not  at  the  foot 
but  at  the  top.  I  was  not  able  to  recollect  just 
how  many  years  ago  that  was,  but  I  knew  that 
whenever  I  met  my  life-long  friend.  Dr.  James 
Kennedy  Patterson,  that  he  would  remember,  for 
as  "Jimmie"  he  had  a  memory  for  everything. 
And  last  evening  he  gave  me  the  exact  dates.  Still 
later  we  met  at  Hanover  College  as  fellow  stu- 
dents, not  however  as  class-mates,  because  he  was 
in  advance  of  me,  and  between  the  time  I  got 
acquainted  with  him  as  "Jimmie,"  and  the  time  he 
became  "Patterson"  in  the  college,  I  was  informed 

27 


Fortieth  Anni\'ersary. 

that  he  had  memorized  the  spelling,  pronunciation 
and  definition  of  all  the  words  in  Webster's  school 
dictionary.  He  did  not  tell  me  that,  and  I  can  not 
vouch  for  its  truth,  but  I  know  that  as  "Jimmie" 
he  had  the  pluck  and  persistence  and  the  memory 
to  do  it;  and  besides  I  have  always  been  reminded 
of  it  by  his  diction,  and  by  the  facility  and  ac- 
curacy with  which  he  handles  the  English  language 
in  everything  that  comes  from  his  pen. 

When  I  was  invited  to  attend  this  celebration 
I  had  no  thought  but  to  come  if  it  were  possible. 
I  immediately  began  to  look  up  the  way  and  never 
before  did  I  so  thoroughly  realize  how  wide  the 
Ohio  Eiver  is.  On  my  desk  were  folders  contain- 
ing the  time  tables  of  all  the  principal  railroad 
systems  north  of  the  river,  and  several  of  them 
had  lines  extending  southward  to  the  river;  but 
there  they  stopped.  No  one  of  them  gave  me  any 
information  as  to  how  to  find  any  place  south  of 
the  river.  They  told  me  how  to  reach  any  place 
north  of  it  in  the  United  States  and  Canada,  but 
not  how  to  come  here.  Consulting  with  the  Pas- 
senger Agent  of  the  Pennsylvania  lines  he  after  a 
careful  and  patient  investigation  of  the  matter  told 
me  how  to  come ;  and  here  I  am,  as  I  suppose,  the 
first  and  solitary  traveler  by  rail  that  ever  traveled 
from  my  home  in  Fort  Wayne,  Ind.,  to  Lexington, 
Ky.  It  seems  as  if  there  was  more  intercourse 
between  Kentucky  and  Indiana  in  the  day  of 
General  George  Rogers  Clark  and  of  General 
Anthony  Wayne  than  there  is  now.  I  want  you 
students  of  this  University,  boys  and  girls  when 
you  go  out  into  life,  to  do  what  you  can  to  in- 
crease the  trade  and  travel  between  these  states — 
28 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

increase  the  intercourse  by  marriage  between  the 
north  and  the  south  side  of  the  Oliio  Eiver.  From 
my  experience  of  life-long  friendships  with  native 
born  Kentuckians,  I  believe  it  would  do  you  good 
and  the  Indianians  good  to  get  better  acquainted — 
and  this  notwithstanding  the  introductory  remarks 
of  the  chairman. 

Living  on  different  sides  of  that  wide  river, 
I  believe  that  President  Patterson  and  I  have  not 
met  personally  for  about  precisely  the  number  of 
years  that  he  has  been  President  of  this  Institu- 
tion. Our  days  were  not  at  our  own  command. 
When  I  invited  him  to  come  on  a  visit  he  could 
not  come,  and  when  he  invited  me  I  could  not  go. 
But  I  have  kept  informed  of  his  work.  I  know 
something  about  the  circumstances  that  have  been 
alluded  to  here  this  afternoon;  I  know  something 
about  the  hard-fought  conflicts  and  the  splendid 
victories  by  which  my  old  friend  saved  the  State 
College  from  wreck  and  ruin,  and  about  the  ca- 
pacity and  energy  he  has  exhibited  in  building  it 
up  to  become  the  present  great  State  University  of 
Kentucky.  (Applause.)  It  is  not  easy  in  these 
days,  as  I  have  found  from  some  experience,  to 
obtain  a  man  suitable  to  be  the  President  of  a 
college  or  university.  Men  with  the  mantle  of 
Thomas  Arnold  of  Rugby,  or  of  Mark  Hopkins  of 
Williams,  upon  their  shoulders  are  not  standing 
around  waiting  for  a  job ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  varied  accomplishments  exhibited  by  President 
Patterson  in  the  past  history  of  this  Institution 
could  scarcely  have  been  found  combined  in  an- 
other man  if  you  had  searched  the  world  over  for 
him.     The  legal  and  judicial  talent  and  learning 

29 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

and  the  statesmanlike  qualities  exhibited  in  his 
determination  to  have  nothing  but  success  were 
brought  out  by  difficulties  which  arose  incidentally 
while  pursuing  his  chosen  vocation  of  an  educator. 
For  that  is  what  he  chose  to  be,  an  educator.  Any- 
body can  hear  recitations  and  mark  the  grades  of 
the  students  according  to  his  own  sweet  will,  but 
educators  are  born  not  made.  The  forty  years  of 
Dr.  Patterson's  honored  and  successful  presidency 
of  this  institution  show  that  to  begin  with  he  had 
the  native  gift,  the  bent,  the  mental  furnishing 
and  the  educational  preparation  necessary  to  make 
a  first-class  president.  And  they  show  what  is  no 
less  important  that  he  did  not  lie  down  on  his 
previous  preparation,  but  that  with  an  active  mind 
which  continued  to  grow  in  strength  and  compre- 
hension, he  kept  abreast  of  the  progress  which 
during  the  last  forty  years  has  been  made  in  the 
ever-widening  scope  of  knowledge  in  all  the  vari- 
ous departments  with  which  this  institution  has 
had  to  do.  To  this  may  be  attributed  the  fact 
that  his  later  addresses  have  shown  undiminished 
strength  and  vigor,  and  increasing  fullness  of 
thought.  Notwithstanding  the  many  times  he  has 
bent  his  bow  it  abides  in  strength  and  the  last 
time  you  heard  it  twang  it  twanged  as  clearly  and 
sharply  and  the  arrow  sped  as  swiftly  and  as 
surely  to  the  mark  as  at  any  time  in  the  years 
gone  by. 

My  dear  old  friend,  Jimmie — (Applause)  — 
it  is  with  unmingled  joy  that  I  am  privileged  to 
rejoice  with  you  on  this  occasion,  when  from  the 
mount  of  triumph  you  can  look  back  over  the  way 
in  which  you  have  come.  The  work  of  an  educator 
30 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

like  that  of  a  minister  is  not  so  spectacular  as 
the  work  of  some  people,  but  it  has  its  peculiar 
satisfactions.  It  is  deep  and  lasting.  It  is  a  force 
which  acting  immediately  upon  those  who  have 
come  under  your  instruction  and  personal  influ- 
ence will  through  them  go  on  multiplying  itself  in 
hundreds  and  thousands  who  never  saw  you — in 
this  state,  in  other  states  and  in  other  countries. 
So  your  work  remains  and  shall  remain.  That 
river  has  separated  us  in  body  but  not  in  affection ; 
and  while  I  am  here  to-day  and  remember  about 
the  number  of  those  who  started  in  life  with  you 
and  me,  it  brings  serious  thoughts;  and  one  of 
my  dearest  thoughts  of  that  eternal  heavenly  land 
to  which  I  trust  you  and  I  are  traveling,  is  that 
there  we  shall  have  the  time  and  opportunity  for 
the  personal  fellowships  which  this  busy  world  de- 
nied us.  I  trust  that  when  we  meet  together  over 
there,  there  will  be  no  river  between  us,  but  that 
the  friendship  which  began  "auld  lang  syne,"  on 
the  Madison  hills,  shall  be  renewed  to  continue 
forever  and  ever.    God  bless  you.     (Applause). 


31 


Fortieth  Anniversary, 


Honored  Guests,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — 

3T  affords  me  great  pleasure  to  be  present 
upon  this  occasion  to  add  my  testimonial  to 
the  esteem  and  regard  with  which  the  hon- 
ored President  of  this  institution  is  held.  Dr. 
Patterson  has  done  for  the  State  of  Kentucky,  and 
for  the  cause  of  education  in  general,  a  great  work. 
It  is  a  work  which  will  continue  to  grow  and  ex- 
pand in  the  years  that  are  to  come.  This  insti- 
tution today  is  his  monument.  It  will  ever  he  so 
regarded. 

On  this  beautiful  June  afternoon,  however,  I 
do  not  believe  that  it  would  be  inappropriate  in 
me,  even  upon  this  occasion,  to  call  attention  to 
some  facts  which  confront  us  as  Kentuckians. 
Being  a  native  born  Kentuckian,  I  am  proud  of 
her  history,  and  proud  of  her  institutions,  yet  I 
cannot  understand  why  it  is  that,  although  in  Vir- 
ginia, under  the  leadership  of  Thomas  Jefferson, 
more  than  a  century  ago,  they  saw  it  was  one  of 
the  duties  of  the  State  to  furnish  higher  education 
for  her  people,  that  Kentucky  neglected  it  so  long. 

By  the  last  Federal  census,  notwithstanding 
the  great  work  that  has  been  done  by  State  Col- 
lege, and  by  the  educational  institutions  of  Ken- 
tucky, among  all  the  states  and  territories  of 
the  Union,  in  proportion  to  population,  there  are 
fewer  college  educated  young  men  and  women  and 
fewer  college  graduates  than  in  any  other  state. 
32 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

It  is  also  true  that  in  this  great  and  glorious  State 
of  ours  more  than  one-fifth  of  the  white  voters 
of  the  native  white  population  are  unable  to  read; 
it  is  also  true  that  there  are  at  least  eight  counties 
in  which  the  per  cent  of  illiteracy  of  the  native 
white  population  is  more  than  thirty  per  cent. 
In  at  least  three  counties  in  this  great  State  there 
are  thirty-five  per  cent  of  the  native  white  voters 
who  can  neither  read  nor  write.  In  other  words, 
when  the,-*e  voters  go  to  the  ballot  box  to  cast 
their  suffrage  in  regard  to  the  great  questions 
which  confront  us  as  a  State  and  as  a  Nation,  in 
some  of  the  counties  one-fifth,  in  some  of  the  coun- 
ties one-fourth,  and  in  a  few  more  than  one-third, 
must  determine  their  suffrage  by  the  emblems 
upon  the  ballot. 

Our  educational  system  has  been  disjointed  and 
disconnected,  and  this  great  institution  which  Dr. 
Patterson  has  brought  into  existence,  as  it  were, 
and  due  largely  to  his  efforts,  it  is  strange  that 
it  has  grown  as  it  has  with  the  material  from  which 
it  had  to  draw,  because  in  Kentucky  we  have  no 
high  schools  whose  graduates  could  enter  this  in- 
stitution. 

It  is  unnecessary  upon  this  occasion  to  enquire 
into  the  causes  of  this  condition.  We  know  that 
these  are  facts ;  and  we  know,  too,  as  Kentuckians, 
that  we  are  courageous  enough  to  realize  it,  and 
that  we  have  the  power  and  the  will  to  remedy 
them.  We  believe  that  with  this  institution  as  the 
crown  jewel  in  the  educational  system  of  the  State 
of  Kentucky,  that  we  will  have  county  high  schools 
in  every  county  and  in  every  neighborhood  with 
rural  schools,  under  the  influence  of  this  great  in- 

33 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

stitution,  and  wise  laws  will  become  what  they 
should  be;  and  the  country  boys  and  girls  will  be 
prepared  to  go  to  the  county  high  schools,  and 
these  county  high  schools  will  send  not  only 
one  thousand,  but  will  send  three,  four  or  five 
thousand  students  to  this  institution  to  prepare 
for  the  life  that  is  before  them  as  citizens  of  this 
great  Commonwealth. 

I  am  glad  to  be  here  upon  this  occasion  to  add 
my  testimonial  to  this  movement  and  to  express  my 
personal  regard  and  appreciation  of  the  work 
that  Dr.  Patterson  has  done.  I  do  not  believe  it 
is  inappropriate  that  we  as  Keutuckians  should 
realize  that  we  have  educationally  fallen  short,  and 
also  to  realize  that  there  is  enough  manhood  and 
womanhood  in  Kentucky  to  put  her  back  where 
she  was,  and  where  she  should  be,  in  the  front 
of  the  line.     (Applause.) 


34 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


labbrega  of  3^t\}.  Ctarleg  In  i^epnoUiif 

Mr.  Chairman: — 

^£  HAVE  been,  while  sitting  here,  thinking  of 
^l  the  fortieth  anniversary  of  Dr.  Samuel  J. 
^^  Nichols  as  pastor  of  the  Second  Presbyte- 
rian Church,  of  St.  Louis,  Mo.  During  the  week 
in  which  that  anniversary  was  being  celebrated,  a 
stranger  happened  to  go  by  the  church.  He 
was  surprised  to  see  the  church  illuminated  dur- 
ing the  week,  so  he  stepped  in  and  asked  the 
reason  for  it.  He  said  to  the  usher  inside, 
"Who  is  that  speaking?"  and  the  usher  said, 
"That  is  Dr.  Nichols,  the  pastor  of  the  church." 
"Well,"  he  said,  "How  long  has  he  been  speak- 
ing," and  the  usher,  having  his  mind  on  the  cele- 
bration and  the  anniversary,  said,  "Forty  years." 
"Well,"  he  said,  "1  am  going  to  see  him  through 
to  the  end."  Now  the  point  is,  not  that  any  man 
is  going  to  speak  this  afternoon  for  forty  years, 
but  we  hope  we  will  all  be  allowed  for  a  long  time 
after  these  forty  years,  to  see  President  Patter- 
son through  to  the  end;  and  we  are  going  to  ask 
him  to  allow  us  to  have  that  privilege. 

While  other  men  have  been  speaking  about 
Indiana  this  afternoon,  I  have  been  thinking  of 
Scotland,  and  the  debt  that  education  and  educa- 
tional institutions  owe  to  old  Scotland.  Only  last 
week,  in  the  city  of  Washington,  the  capital  of 
our  nation,  a  monument  was  unveiled  to  the  mem- 
ory of  John  Witherspoon,  the  first  President  of 

35 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

Princeton  University,  who  was  a  Scotsman;  and 
one  of  the  successors  of  Dr.  Witherspoon  was 
James  McCosh,  the  great  Scottish  philosopher. 
And  m  this  State  of  Kentucky  one  of  the  great- 
est professors  of  medicine,  the  man  who  performed 
first  the  operation  known  as  ovariotomy,  was  Dr. 
McDowell,  who  was  also  a  Scotsman.  In  fact, 
if  you  were  to  take  out  of  the  history  of  education 
the  Scots  who  have  done  so  mach  for  our  insti- 
tutions of  learning,  you  have  not  much  left. 

A  Scotchman  and  an  Englishman  were  talking, 
and  the  Englishman  was  naming  the  great  men  of 
his  country  who  had  figured  in  the  affairs  of  Eng- 
land, and  in  its  history,  and  whenever  a  name  was 
mentioned  the  Scotchman  would  say,  "He  was  a 
Scot."  The  Englishman,  somewhat  provoked, 
said,  "I  believe  you  would  claim  even  Shakes- 
peare." "Well,"  he  said,  "his  abilities  would  justi- 
fy the  inference."  Now  it  is  true  that  there  may 
be  Scottish  blood,  as  Dr.  Moffat  remarked  to 
you,  in  the  great  men  of  this  country;  and 
it  is  especially  true  among  our  educators,  there- 
fore, this  afternoon,  as  we  honor  this  Scotchman 
for  the  forty  years  he  has  been  President  of  this 
institution,  we  must  give  our  expression  of  grati- 
tude to  old  Scotland;  and  we  are  glad  that  Scot- 
land has  sent  to  us  not  only  men  who  can  accu- 
mulate gold  and  build  libraries  for  us,  but  also 
teachers  like  President  McCosh  and  Dr.  Patterson. 
Sometimes  we  think  that  these  Scots  come  to  this 
country  to  make  iron  and  steel  for  a  living,  but 
they  come  also  to  put  iron  into  our  blood,  and  to 
teach  us  how  to  be  honest.  They  come  to  preach 
and  to  teach  and  train  the  brains    of    American 

36 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

youth.  The  old  Scotch  eagerness  to  be  a  scholar 
of  which  Ian  MacClaren,  the  great  Scottish 
writer,  has  written  in  the  "Bonnie  Brier  Bush/' 
has  been  stimulated  in  the  hearts  of  Amer- 
ican bo3'^s  and  girls  by  these  professors  from 
the  old  country.  Little  Scotland,  we  thank  thee 
for  thy  great  gifts;  for  these  men  that  have  been 
sent  to  us  from  this  land  of  learning;  and  I  be- 
lieve that  Prof.  White  must  have  some  Scottish 
blood  in  him ;  he  must  have  had  Scottish  ancestors, 
because  I  know  his  value  to  the  State  of  Kentucky 
in  an  educational  way.  (Applaud.)  We  have  to 
thank  President  Patterson  this  afternoon,  not  only 
for  himself,  and  that  is  our  great  debt  of  grati- 
tude, but  also  for  Prof.  White  and  his  forty  years 
of  service  with  President  Patterson  as  one  of  his 
assistants;  and  if  Prof.  White  did  come  from 
Scotland,  and  I  think  he  must  have  come  from 
that  stock,  we  will  have  to  thank  Scotland  for 
him,  too. 

I  am  glad  to  be  here  to  congratulate  President 
Patterson  and  the  State  of  Kentucky.  If  you 
only  knew  the  odds  against  which  he  has  had  to 
fight;  if  you  knew  the  greatness  of  the  work  of 
this  State  University  compared  with  the  little  in- 
come that  the  State  of  Kentucky  gives  to  this 
institution,  your  admiration  would  be  increased  an 
himdred  fold.  I  Ijelieve  Kentucky  some  time  will 
awake,  and  then  the  name  of  James  K.  Patterson 
will  be  greater  than  it  is  today.  (Applause.) 


Z7 


451843 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 


^hhrtasi  of  3aeti.  Sft^situa  P.  4^arrett 

ilfr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — 

^Sl/'S  I  understand  it,  I  owe  the  privilege  and 
\faj  the  happiness  of  being  here  on  this  occa- 
^^  sion  to  the  fact  that  I  was  associated  with 
your  friend,  President  Patterson,  for  a  number  of 
years  in  college.  My  first  word  is  a  word  of  con- 
gratulation. More  than  three-quarters  of  a  cen- 
tury ago,  in  Scotland,  there  was  born  a  lad,  and 
while  he  was  yet  very  young  his  parents,  by  the 
good  providence  of  God,  brought  him  to  Indiana; 
and  there  he  remained  for  a  while  until  he  got 
started  in  his  education,  and  then  they  permitted 
him  to  come  to  Kentucky.  (Laughter.)  I  con- 
gratulate Kentucky  upon  having  with  them  for 
these  many  years  our  dear  friend  and  your  friend, 
Dr.  Patterson,  to  guide  some  of  these  educational 
affairs  for  your  State,  and  to  accomplish  what  he 
has  accomplished  in  his  work  here.  I  desire  to 
congratulate  Dr.  Patterson  himself  also  on  the 
good  providence  of  God  which  has  led  him  along 
in  the  path  which  he  has  followed  so  wonderfully 
and  so  successfully,  and  which  has  preserved  his 
life  and  brought  him  to  this  point  in  his  life's 
work  and  to  reap  these  honors  so  full,  so  excel- 
lent, so  closely  upon  his  head. 

I  think  I  may  say  that  the  year  that  Dr.  Pat- 
terson graduated  at  Hanover  College  was  the  year 
in  which  I  became  a  professor  in  that  institution. 
I  have  been  all  my  life  long  permitted  to  associ- 

38 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

ate  with  young  people,  in  the  earlier  part  of  pro- 
fessional life  with  young  men,  later  with  young 
men  and  women;  and  I  have  found  that  the  one 
thing  which  lies  at  the  foundation  of  a  successful 
life  is  on  the  part  of  a  young  man  or  woman  to 
have  a  vision  of  something  to  accomplish  in  the 
world — an  ideal  placed  before  them,  A  young 
man  may  not  or  cannot  go  forward  blindly, 
thoughtlessly,  simply  absorbing  what  is  before  him 
for  a  long  time  without  losing  a  great  deal  of  the 
power  which  tomes  from  education.  Now  it 
seems  to  me  that  I  can  recall  from  the  days  that 
Dr.  Patterson  was  in  college  the  fact  that  the 
students  as  well  as  the  teachers  recognized  this 
quality  in  his  student  life ;  that  he  was  not  satisfied 
merely  with  words,  or  with  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge,  without  an  aim  or  end  that  he  had 
placed  before  the  ideal,  and  with  the  desire  to 
reach  in  the  best  manner  possible  the  ideal  which 
was  before  him. 

I  think  of  another  thing  which  students  in 
college  or  in  the  course  of  their  education  desire, 
and  that  is  a  fixed  purpose  in  life.  They  may  not 
have  before  them  a  clear  perception  of  what  they 
want  to  become — that  is,  whether  they  want  to 
become  a  lawyer,  or  physician,  or  a  minister,  or  to 
enter  into  the  conflicts  of  political  life,  but  they 
must  have  a  fixed  purpose  to  accomplish  something 
useful  and  excellent  in  life  if  they  are  to  meet  the 
end  for  which  they  are  selected  by  the  providence 
of  God,  and  permitted  to  engage  in  the  work  which 
lies  before  them  as  students.  We  recognized  all 
through  the  long  life  of  our  President  this  fixed 
purpose ;  it  became  apparent  among  his  fellow  stu- 

39 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

dents  that  his  desire  and  design  was  in  whatever 
place  God  should  put  him,  to  accomplish  well  in 
the  best  manner  possible  the  work  which  was  be- 
fore him. 

You  have  this  afternoon  had  repeatedly  brought 
before  you  another  element  which  enters  into  the 
successful  life  of  a  young  man  in  the  prosojution 
of  his  work,  and  that  is  the  courage  to  meet  diffi- 
culties; courage  to  enter  upon  the  work  which  is 
before  him ;  courage  to  stand  firm  for  that  which 
he  considers  right,  and  that  which  he  feels  must 
be  accomplished  in  the  providence  of  God,  and  to 
work  faithfully  and  earnestly  for  that  purpose. 
You  have  had  before  you,  now  have  before  you, 
that  which  lies  at  the  foundation  of  all  success  in 
this  work  of  life,  and  that  is  the  foundation  of 
real  character  founded  and  laid  upon  the  sure 
foundation  of  truth,  of  a  belief  in  the  truth,  and 
right  and  lovely,  and  that  which  is  acceptable  in 
the  sight  of  God,  and  for  the  good  of  men. 

I  congratulate  you,  therefore,  that  you  have 
had  with  you  a  man  of  this  stamp  for  all  these 
years;  and  that  in  the  providence  of  God  we  are 
now  permitted  to  meet  today  to  do  him  honor.  I 
pray  that  the  Lord  will  watch  over  him  and  pre- 
serve his  life,  and  make  his  latter  days  not  only 
as  useful  as  his  preceding  days,  but  glorious  in  the 
excellent  work  which  still  remains  for  him  to  do. 
(Applause.) 


40 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


3amarfes!  of  JBpan  l^iUmm  S.  Caperi 

Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen : — 

^£   ESTEEM  my  privilege  great  indeed  to  be 
^l    counted  as  one,  even    of    twenty  speakers, 
^^    who  is  to  voice  the  prevailing  sentiment  of 
gratitude    and    love    of    a    great    Commonwealth 
towards    the    man  who  has  made,  possibly,  the 
greatest  single  contribution  for  the  success  and 
glory  of  his  State  in  the  development  of  her  Uni- 
versity.    To     President     Patterson     belongs    the 
award,  not  of  perishable  laurels,  nor  of  gifts  of 
gold,  but  rather  the  imperishable  love  and  grati- 
tude of  fathers  and  mothers  and  the  very  manhood 
of  our  State  for  making  it  possible  for  them  to 
realize  the  great  ideal  of  the  power  of  education, 
from  base  to  capstone,  within  their  own  borders. 
The  University  idea  is  a  just  measure  of  the  large- 
ness of  our  honored  friend's  mind  and  heart:  in 
this  University  we  can  see  him  stretching  some- 
what his  length  and  breadth  and  depth  and  height ; 
without  fulsome  praise,  we  can  all  exclaim,  "See 
there    the    man!"     (pointing    to    the    outspread 
buildings  of  the  University) .  And  yet,  my  friends, 
no  great  man  is  adequately  judged  by  his  works 
alone :  the  personality  of  a  man  is  greater  far  than 
he  can  put  into  concrete  form.  This  truth  finds 
beautiful  illustration  in  our  great  Patterson:  the 
sparkle  of  his  mind  and  the  warmth  of  his  heart 
are  only  known  by  those  who  have  been  privileged 
to  come  into  the  inner  life  of  his  friendship.    His 

41 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

coiiras-e,  his  faith,  his  lo3'alt3',  these  have  all  gone 
into  the  material  structure  of  the  University,  but 
they  are  best  appreciated,  as  exhibited  in  per- 
sonal relationship  with  him.  The  light  of  his 
own  soul  is  caught  from  his  keen  eye  and  the  lov 
of  his  heart  is  best  interpreted  by  the  grip  of  his 
friendly  hand  and  generous  hospitality. 

Mr.  President :  Allow  me  here,  in  this  solemn 
presence,  to  declare  my  unqualified  affection  and 
esteem  for  you  and  my  deep  sense  of  privilege  in 
being  here  on  this  occasion.  I  shall  always  cherish 
it  as  being  one  of  my  very  highest  honors  and  dis- 
tinctions. I  wish  you  "good  luck  in  the  name 
of  the  Lord."     (Applause.) 


42 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


abbreas;  of  Br.  ^rtfjur  Imager 

Mr.  Chairman,  President   Patterson,  Ladies    and 
Gentlemen : — 

/^/"N  introducing  me  as  "Reverend"  our  chair- 
^l  man  has  made  a  mistake.  I  am  not  more 
^^  reverend  than  Dr.  Patterson  himself,  but 
have  been  an  educator  for  twentj^-five  3'ears,  and 
I  have  looked  upon  President  Patterson  from  my 
home  in  Greorgetown  at  close  range,  and  mth 
great  interet^t.  Therefore,  as  an  educator  I  come 
here  this  afternoon  simply  to  pay  my  respects  to 
this  veteran  leader  in  the  army  of  educators  in 
Kentuclcy.  I  have  been  thinking  as  I  sat  here  in 
the  midst  of  these  buildings,  of  the  inscription 
which  we  all  know,  or  know  of,  placed  over  the 
north  door  of  St.  Paul's  cathedral  in  London  to 
commemorate  the  architect,  Sir  Christopher 
Wren:  Led  or,  si  monumentum  requiris  cir- 
cumspice. 

I  believe  1  have  never  known  an  occasion 
where  that  familiar  inscription  could  be  more  ap- 
propriately quoted  than  here  and  now.  When  Dr. 
Patterson  came  to  this  institution  forty  years  ago, 
it  was  an  empty  field,  and  now  it  is  strewn  thick 
with  splendid  buildings.  He  came  here  when 
there  was  no  college,  no  institution,  and  now  there 
is  a  great  State  University  with  a  numerous  fac- 
ulty, with  a  great  income,  and  with  a  great  crowd 
of  students;  with  a  magnificent  alumni,  and  a 
great  army  of  loyal  friends.     It  seems  to  me  that 

43 


Fortieth  Anniversary, 

this  is  his  monument,  and  that  one  looking  upon 
it  and  seeing  it  in  these  days  should  not  give  him- 
self up  entirely  to  lamenting  the  backwardness  of 
Kentucky  in  education.    When  we  feel  inclined  to 
disparage,  and  to  criticise   what   has   been    done, 
sometimes  I  feel  that  we  are  not  likely  to  do  jus- 
tice to  the  leaders  in  educational  work  here  who 
have  fought  in  the  past.    However  bad  it  may  be 
for  Kentucky  now  to  be  so  low  down  on  the  list  in 
illiteracy,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  work  of  Dr. 
Patterson   and   other   educators   in  Kentucky,   it 
would  be  worse  still.     He  has  wrought  nobly  and 
well.     He  has  done  a  great  work,  and  as  an  ed- 
ucator I  come  here  to  honor  him,  and  to  offer 
him  my  tribute  of  praise.     Many  people  seem  to 
think    that    President    Patterson,  to  use  a  slang 
phrase,  has  not  been  "on  to  his  job."    I  sometimes 
wonder,  I  have  often  wondered,  that  these  men 
who  seem  to  know  so  well  how  to  run  colleges  and 
to    do   everything   else,   never   seem   somehow   to 
get  themselves  elected  to  these  positions.     This 
has  been  one  of  the  sociological  puzzles  to  me,  that 
there  is  always  on  the  outside  of  every  enterprise 
a  lot  of  folks  who  are  ready  for  indiscriminate 
criticism.     Now,  gentlemen,  I  have  been  in  the 
work   of   education  in  Kentucky    for    twenty-five 
or  thirty  years.     President  Patterson  and  I  have 
seen  presidents  come  and  presidents  go.     But  it 
is  m}"^  belief  that  no  man  can  sit  upon  the  driver's 
seat  of  a  great  university  for  forty  years  without 
having  the  qualifications  to  make  it  go.      (Ap- 
plause.)     There  is  no  harder  team  to  drive  on 
earth  than  a  college  faculty,  and  a  great  crowd  of 
college  students.     (Applause.)     And  if  President 

44 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson, 

Patterson  had  not  known  how  to  hold  the  reins 
he  would  have  been  kicked  out  of  the  box  long 
ago.  I  believe  that  he  has  had  just  those  qualities 
that  the  University  of  Kentucky  needed  during 
these  forty  years;  that  Scotch  canniness  which  he 
has  come  by  so  honestly;  that  far-sightedness; 
that  courage  and  that  aggressiveness.  I  know 
some  men  who  are  looking  for  a  situation  with 
large  emphasis  on  the  ''sit."  President  Patterson 
does  not  belong  to  that  type.  I  admire  his  resili- 
ency, his  undiscourageahility.  I  have  seen  him 
sat  upon,  but  he  always  rose  right  up  again.  A 
friend  of  mine  told  me  a  story  of  a  little  boy  who 
was  taken  by  his  uncle  to  a  shop  to  see  one  of 
these  stove-pipe  hats  that  shut  up  like  an  accor- 
dian.  His  uncle  took  him  there  and  showed  him 
this  toy  as  a  curiosity.  A  few  days  later  his  uncle 
came  around  to  his  home  wearing  a  handsome  silk 
hat.  The  boy  looked  at  it  and  examined  it,  and 
directly  he  brought  it  to  his  uncle  and  said,  "Un- 
cle, this  one  don't  shut  up;  I  have  sat  on  it  three 
times  and  it  don't  shut  up."  President  Patter- 
son reminds  me  of  that  hat.  He  don't  shut  up. 
It  is  no  easy  task  to  found  a  university,  and  it  is 
still  a  greater  task  to  preside  over  the  destinies  of 
a  great  college  like  this  forty  years.  I  want  to 
give  to  President  Patterson  my  sincere  respect  for 
his  great  performance,  and  my  hope  that  he  will 
live  many  years  to  show  us  young  Kentuckians 
how  it  ought  to  be  done.     (Applause.) 


45 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 


I^bbr^ssi  ot  J^rof.  ^I^enrp  ^,  Cljerrj» 


0 


Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — 

UR  republic  demands  education  and  more 
abundant  education;  ideas  and  more  noble 
ideas ;  more  government  by  the  people  and 
leSvS  government  by  the  politician;  more  govern- 
ment by  the  teacher  and  less  government  by  the 
policeman;  more  government  by  the  school  house 
and  less  government  by  the  military  camp;  more 
government  by  the  university  and  less  government 
bv  brute  force;  more  and  better  schools  and  fewer 
jails,  penitentiaries  and  asylums;  more  scholars 
and  fewer  criminals;  more  freemen  and  fewer 
slaves;  more  life,  more  life,  and  more  life.  (Ap- 
plause.) ]S[ature  abhors  a  government  by  brute 
force.  The  best  administered  government  is  the 
one  that  seeks  to  govern  the  masses  by  aiding  the 
individual  in  governing  himself.  The  moral,  in- 
tellectual, spiritual  and  physical  health  of  the  two 
and  a  half  millions  of  people  of  Kentucky  is  re- 
garded by  the  progressive  citizen  as  the  most  vital 
question  now  before  the  citizenship  of  our  Com- 
m.onwoalth.  The  harmonious  and  universal  vital- 
ization  of  human  units  will  solve  all  questions. 
(Applause.)  It  will  take  the  power  to  enforce  in- 
dustrial tyranny  from  the  heartless  American  To- 
bacco Trust  and  cause  the  dreaded  night  rider  to 
vanish  into  the  darkness  from  whence  he  came. 
If  there  is  a  peril  which  threatens  Kentucky  or 
any  other  State,  it  is  the  peril  of  superstition,  in- 
46 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

competency,  penny  ideas — the  peril  of  ignorance. 
(Applause.)  Enskin  said:  "There  is  but  one 
cure  for  public  distress,  and  that  is  public  educa- 
tion directed  to  make  more  men  useful,  thought- 
ful, sympathetic  and  just."  Conscience  charged 
with  spiritual  electricity  is  the  ballast  of  a  de- 
mocracy. It  is  the  mission  of  the  public  school, 
high  school,  normal  school,  the  university  and  all 
other  educational  institutions  to  generate  this 
electricity.  Lowell  evidently  considered  the  voice 
of  conscience  a  leading  factor  in  the  solution  of 
all  problems.  He  said :  "Our  healing  is  not  in 
the  storm  nor  in  the  whirlwind.  It  is  not  in  mon- 
archies nor  aristocracies,  but  will  be  revealed  by  the 
still  small  voice  that  speaks  to  the  heart  and  con- 
science prompting  man  to  a  wider  and  wiser  hu- 
manity." No  wonder  Mr.  Everett  wrote :  "What ! 
Feed  a  child's  body  and  let  his  soul  hunger;  pam- 
per his  limbs  and  starve  his  faculties?" 

"Wliat !  Plant  the  earth,  cover  a  thousand  hills 
with  your  droves  of  cattle,  pursue  the  fish  to  their 
hiding-place  in  the  sea,  and  spread  out  your 
wheat  fields  across  the  plain,  in  order  to  supply 
the  wants  of  that  body,  which  will  soon  be  as  poor 
and  senseless  as  the  poorest  clod,  and  let  the  pure, 
spiritual  essence  within  you,  with  all  its  glorious 
capacities  for  improvement,  languish  and  pine? 

"What !  Build  factories,  turn  in  rivers  upon 
the  waterwheels,  unchain  the  imprisoned  spirits 
of  steam,  to  weave  a  garment  for  the  body,  and 
let  the  soul  remain  unadorned  and  naked?" 

We  believe  with  Mr.  Everett  that  the  training 
of  citizens  for  life  is  the  greatest  work  delegated 
to  the  hands  of  man.  We  may  boast  of  our  coun- 

47 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

try  and  tell  of  its  acres  of  land  bursting  with  min- 
eral wealth;  its  lakes  and  ocean  coasts;  its  reve- 
nues and  rich  treasures,  its  great  cities  and  won- 
derful public  buildings  and  strong  f ortificatiorLs ; 
its  railroads  and  commerce;  its  white  warships  and 
itfl  standing  armies;  but  after  all  our  government 
is  a  spiritual  life.  It  is  what  is  in  the  minds  of 
00,000,000  of  people.  It  is  a  thought.  This 
being  true,  I  desire  to  say  with  emphasis  that  the 
vision  of  Kentucky  boys  and  girls  is  our  greatest 
asset.  There  is  not  a  child  in  Lexington  that  is 
not  worth  more  than  all  of  the  gold  and  silver  in 
Kentucky.  I  speak  not  as  a  Pine  Tree  Tapper 
from  Florida  or  as  a  Cotton  Picker  from  the  Lone 
Star  State,  or  as  a  Hoosier  from  Indiana;  but  as 
a  loyal  Corn  Cracker,  who  was  born  and  reared 
in  humble  and  obscure  life  among  the  sand  hills 
of  Kentucky.  I  love  eweiy  inch  of  Kentucky  soil 
and  Kentucky  life.  We  all  know  that  the  Ken- 
tucky people  are  a  great  people.  Nature  has  been 
esnecially  kind  to  us.  I  do  not  want  to  be  narrow, 
but  you  will  excuse  me  if  I  believe  that  if  God  has 
a  favorite  creation,  it  is  the  Kentucky  child.  I 
believe  there  are  more  great  men  and  women  to 
the  square  inch  in  Kentucky  childhood  than  can 
be  found  among  an  equal  number  of  children  in 
any  other  Commonwealth. 

The  name  of  Kentucky's  illustrious  sons  are 
written  upon  almost  every  page  of  history  that  has 
been  recorded  since  I>aniel  Boone  first  found  his 
way  into  the  Kentucky  wilderness.  Kentucky  gave 
to  the  country  a  Clay,  whose  logic  and  oratory  in- 
structed and  charmed  the  world.  It  gave  to  the 
country  a  Lincoln,  whose  power  of  mind  and  heart 

48 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

solved  the  dangerous  question  of  African  slavery. 
It  produced  a  Foster,  whose  '-'Old  Kentucky 
Home"  is  being  sung  around  the  world.  It  num- 
bers a  Breckinridge,  a  Marshall,  a  Prentiss,  a 
Crittenden,  a  Hardin,  and  many  more  of  the  most 
brilliant  lights  known  in  American  history  among 
her  sons.  She  has  furnished  Governors,  Congress- 
men, Judges  and  great  men  in  all  walks  of  life 
to  other  States ;  but  where  are  our  Clays,  Lincolns, 
Prentisses,  and  Marshalls  today?  Where  are  our 
future  Governorsj  Supreme  Courts  and  General 
Assem^blies  ? 

Where  are  the  men  who  will  in  future  years 
blaze  the  way  to  a  higher  civilization  in  all  of  the 
divisions  of  human  activities.  I  believe  I  can  tell 
where  they  are.  They  sleep  in  the  bosom  of  Ken- 
tucky's noble  childhood.  They  will  rise  in  their 
glory  and  be  the  Greater  Kentucky  when  the 
schools  of  our  Commonwealth  ring  the  rising  bell 
in  their  souls.  Childhood  shows  us  the  way  to  a 
greater  democratic  Commonwealth. 

Spirit  is  the  endowment  fund  of  a  democracy. 
The  soul  is  the  energy  that  is  behind  commerce 
and  every  other  great  achievement  that  enlarges 
and  ennobles  life.  It  is  the  dynamo  that  turns 
the  complex  machinery  of  human  action.  It  is  the 
great  central  powerhouse  somewhere  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  universe  that  turns  the  wheels  of  pro- 
gresss.  In  fact,  nothing  has  ever  been  accomplish- 
ed by  human  hands  in  the  outward  world  that 
did  not  begin  as  a  concept  in  the  world  of  mind. 
Wherever  our  eyes  go  they  behold  the  product  of 
spirit.  Tobacco  barns  were  burned  and  John 
Holloway  was  shot  before  the  blaze  was  witnessed 

49 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

by  the  physical  eye  and  the  report  of  the  gun  was 
Iieard  by  the  physical  ear.  Captain  Rankin  was 
hanged  before  the  rope  was  put  around  his  neck. 
That  riot  appeared  upon  the  fields  of  the  soul 
before  it  appeared  upon  the  streets  of  Springfield, 
111.  T  am  trying  to  say  that  the  Commonwealth's 
house  will  be  in  bad  order  until  the  soul's  house 
is  put  into  good  order  by  Christian  education. 
(Applause.)  A  great  Commonwealth  cannot  be 
bestowed;  it  must  be  achieved  through  the  devel- 
opment of  the  soul. 

Tlie  citizen  of  patriotic  vision  who  plants  a 
great  university  and  gives  to  Christian  education 
forty  years  of  noble  and  efficient  service  is  a  no- 
bleman— a  hero  in  the  time  of  peace,  who  plants 
the  American  flag  upon  the  heaven  kissed  hills  of 
liberty.  More  than  forty  years  ago  the  honored 
President  of  the  State  University  heard  democra- 
cy's call  for  men,  and  almost  single  handed  and 
alone  opened  a  relentless  warfare  on  superstition, 
incompetency  and  ignorance.  He  has  given  the 
great  Commonwealth  of  Kentucky  a  great  life  and 
a  noble  service.  He  stands  alone  today  in  one  of 
the  epochs  of  Kentucky's  educational  history. 
No  man  in  the  State  has  done  as  much  in  aiding 
the  individual  to  prepare  for  a  larger  life  in  the 
Commonwealth  as  President  James  K.  Patterson, 
whose  forty  years  of  active  service  we  have  met 
to  cele])rate.  I  greatly  value  this  opportunit}^  to 
express  my  deep  and  sympathetic  interest  in  the 
University,  its  officers  and  faculty,  and  my  per- 
sonal esteem  and  regard  for  the  life  and  work  of 
it?  honored  President.  The  regents,  faculty,  stu- 
dents and  friends  of  the  Western  Kentucky  State 
Normal  join  me  in  these  greetings.  (Applause.) 
50 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


^librejia  of  Bitfjarb  l^enrp  Crogjsftelli 

Mr.    Ciiainnaii,   Honored   President,   Ladies   and 
Gentlemen : — 

/•■^HIS  is,  indeed,  a  most  iitting  time  for  con- 
if\  gratulating  President  Patterson,  the  com- 
^^  pletion  of  the  fortieth  year  of  his  Pres- 
idency of  the  University  of  Kentucky.  As  I  was 
listening  to  the  addresses  a  moment  ago,  this 
thought  came  to  my  mind:  The  forty  years  of 
President  Patterson's  incumhency  represent  tran- 
.sition,  a  period  connecting  the  old  with  the  new. 
When  forty  years  ago  President  Patterson  came 
to  this  community  to  take  charge  of  this  institu- 
tion, our  educational  interests  in  Kentucky  were 
far  from  what  thev  are  today.  At  that  time  the 
old  regime  obtained.  The  one  trustee  system  was 
in  vogue  in  our  public  schools.  This  trustee  was 
governed  very  largely  in  the  determination  of  the 
teacher  of  the  school  of  the  district  by  the  spirit 
of  nepotism. 

There  was,  furthermore,  at  that  time  a  great 
gulf  fixed  between  the  insititutions  of  higher  learn- 
ing and  the  elementary  and  secondary  schools. 
It  was  thought  that  there  was  an  irreconcilable 
conflict  between  the  college  and  the  high  school, 
that  if  the  high  school  and  academy  succeeded, 
many  students  would  be  lost  to  the  college  and 
the  university.  We  have  come  to  the  time  when 
we  know  that  there  is  no  such  conflict.  Every 
college  of  rank  is  now  doing  all  that  it  can  to 

51 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

encourage  the  high  school  and  to  render  it  the 
more  effective  in  preparing  students  for  institu- 
tions of  higher  learning  as  well  as  for  the  duties 
of  life.  No  man  has  been  more  diligently  engaged 
in  this  laudable  enterprise  than  President  Pat- 
terson. 

All  honor  is  due  to  the  State  University  and 
its  President  for  the  results  achieved  so  far. 

While  it  was  pointed  out  recently  that  we  had 
in  the  State  of  Kentucky  more  than  1,200  log 
school  houses,  that  there  were  more  than  2,300 
school  houses  without  proper  seats  for  their  stu- 
dent^s,  that  of  the  25,000  trustees  in  the  State 
5,000  could  neither  read  nor  write,  and  that 
10,000  of  these  had  no  adequate  conception  of  the 
duties  of  their  office,  these  conditions  are  rapidly 
disappearing;  and  the  colleges  of  the  State  have 
made  large  contributions  in  this  direction. 

I  am  glad  to  have  the  honor.  Sir,  to  bear  to 
you  the  congratulations  of  Transylvania  Univer- 
sity, its  Board  of  Curators,  its  Executive  Commit- 
tee; and  in  the  name  of  this  institution,  I  desire 
to  wish  you  God  speed,  and  that  your  days  may  be 
lengthened  for  the  accomplishment  of  still  greater 
things  for  our  old  Kentucky  home. 


52 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — 
^flBM^HE  work  of  eminent  specialists  in  most  pro- 
£m\  fessions  may  be  tersely  described  so  that 
^^^^  the  man  in  the  street  may  understand 
something,  at  least,  of  their  ability  and  achieve- 
ments. The  fame  of  great  physicians,  of  astute 
lawyers,  of  eloquent  and  logical  preachers,  of  cap- 
tains of  industry  with  genius  for  organization, 
is  of  the  sort  that  is  easily  understood.  But  these 
men  work  with  things.  How  shall  we  measure 
the  achievements  of  the  teacher  or  college  pro- 
fessor, whose  work  consists  in  stimulating  and 
guiding  the  expanding  minds  of  young  men  and 
young  women  ?  His  influence  is  enormous,  yet  his 
successes  are  confused  by  the  very  successes  he 
helps  others  to  attain.  The  reward  of  the  teacher 
lies  in  the  pleasure  he  finds  in  his  work  and  in 
some  scant  opportunity,  mayhap,  to  extend,  if  only 
slightly,  the  boundaries  of  the  known  body  of 
knowledge. 

These  remarks  are  pertinent  to  a  discussion  of 
the  qualifications  for  college  presidents,  since  they 
are  nearly  always  chosen  from  the  ranks  of  emi- 
nent professors. 

The  college  president  is  usually  an  eminent 
specialist,  and  more.  He  must  necessarily  be  a 
man  of  broad  culture;  yet,  to  be  successful,  he 
must  possess  many  other  qualities,  some  of  them 
almost  antagonistic  to  the  spirit  of  the  class-room 

53 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

and  the  laboratory.  He  must  have  a  strong  per- 
sonality and  a  natural  talent  for  leadership.  He 
must  be  an  accurate  judge  of  men,  have  a  good 
knowledge  of  human  nature  and  a  well-developed 
sense  of  values.  He  must  possess  infinite  tact 
and  infinite  patience.  And  he  must  be  able  to  dis- 
cern the  signs  of  the  times,  so  that  the  institution 
whose  destiny  he  is  helping  to  shape,  may  train 
properly  the  young  minds  committed  to  its  care, 
so  that  they  may  fit  properly  into  the  general 
scheme  of  things. 

The  University  of  to-day  must  be  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  ahead  of  the  times. 

To  the  layman,  the  life  of  a  college  president 
may  seem  to  be  cast  in  particularly  pleasant 
places.  But  there  are  few  so  strenuous.  As  the 
responsible  head,  he  must  guide  his  board  of  trus- 
tees, his  faculty  and  the  student  body.  Any  one 
of  these  is  liable  to  be  fractious  and  sometimes 
all  three.  He  sees  a  glorious  field  of  labor  and 
finds  the  obstacles  so  numerous  and  vexing  that 
they  will  discourage  any  but  the  stoutest  heart. 
It  must  be  a  dim  realization  of  their  stupendous 
tasks  that  prompts  even  the  citizens  of  ungrate- 
ful republics  to  honor  those  college  presidents, 
who,  through  long  and  oftentimes  tempestuous 
careers,  behold  some  measure  of  success  crowning 
their  efforts. 

For  twenty  years  I  have  been  in  close  touch 
with  the  State  University — for  twelve  years  as 
student  or  instructor — and  in  that  time  its  alumni 
have  increased  many  fold  and  its  activities  have 
extended  into  many  new  fields,  A  number  of  new 
departments  or  colleges  have  been  organized,  in- 

54 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

eluding  Mechanical,  Electrical  and  Mining  Engi- 
neering, and  Law,  all  of  which  have  grown  rapid- 
ly, and  the  old  established  colleges  have  shared 
in  the  progress.  The  standards  of  admission  and 
collegiate  work  have  been  raised  until  the  State 
University  towers  above  all  other  institutions  in 
the  Commonwealth  in  power  and  prestige.  Its 
growth  has  been  steady  and  uniform — the  laying 
of  a  solid  foundation.  Its  graduates  are  to  be 
found  in  the  faculties  of  similar  universities  from 
Cornell  to  Leland  Stanford  and  from  Michigan 
and  Wisconsin  to  Alabama.  Its  most  notable  prog- 
ress has  been  made  in  the  past  three  years.  In  a 
decade  the  tide  of  public  sentiment  toward  it  has 
changed  from  toleration  to  enthusiastic  support  in 
the  city,  the  county  and  the  State.  Our  legisla- 
tures have  been  niggardly  in  the  granting  of 
appropriations  for  needed  buildings  and  increas- 
ing the  annual  revenue  for  scholastic  services. 
During  the  past  few  years  some  evidence  has  been 
given  that  this  condition  of  things  is  to  change 
and  that  Kentucky  will  not  l)e  put  to  shame,  as 
she  now  is,  by  every  state  touching  lies  border,  in 
the  matter  of  support  for  higher  education.  The 
rapid  progress  in  primary  and  secondary  educa- 
tion in  Kentucky  promises  well  for  the  future 
students  of  the  University,  and  this  is  due,  in 
some  measure,  to  the  consistent  raising  of  her 
standards  of  admission  and  collegiate  work.  As 
the  representative  of  the  Alumni  Association  of 
the  State  University,  I  have  the  distinguished 
honor  of  offering  to  President  Patterson  their  con- 
gratulations on  the  completion  of  forty  years  of 
honoral)le  service  for  Kentucky.     Many  students 

55 


Fortieth  Anniv'ersary. 

have  been  sent  from  the  old  college  to  take  active 
part  in  the  life  of  the  State  and  there  is  no 
question  of  the  confidence  they  feel  in  his  ability 
and  strength.  They  rejoice  with  him  in  the  suc- 
cess of  their  Alma  Mater  and  honor  him  for  his 
share  in  her  progress.  President  Patterson  is 
known  throughout  this  State  and  others  as  an  able 
speaker  and  writer.  Only  those  who  have  followed 
the  career  of  the  State  University  know  how  hard 
he  has  fought  for  it  and  how  potent  has  been  his 
strong  personality  in  securing  its  present  measure 
of  efficiency  and  successs. 


56 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


^titivtsisi  of  Br.  IB^inttt 

Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — 

3T  is  a  great  privilege  to  me  to  bring  to  you 
the  greeting  of  the  trustees  and  faculty  of 
Central  University;  accept  our  most  cordial 
congratulations  upon  this  day.  Forty  years  of 
service  and  study  is  a  great  achievement.  As  I 
look  over  and  think  that  it  has  been  forty  years  it 
takes  me  back  to  my  early  days.  President  Pat- 
terson entered  upon  his  work  here  as  the  Presi- 
dent of  this  great  institution  before  I  wore  knee 
breeches.  While  to-day  he  has  much  to  ponder  in 
his  mind,  I  would  that  when  the  time  comes  to 
us  to  look  over  forty  years  of  work  that  we  may 
have  such  memories  as  come  to  him  this  day. 

I  have  not  long  been  in  the  State,  but. one  of 
the  first  names  that  came  to  me  as  conspicuous  in 
the  life  of  Kentucky  was  that  of  President  James 
K.  Patterson,  and  all  through  the  brief  years  that 
I  have  been  privileged  to  work  in  this  Common- 
wealth his  name  has  stood  high  in  my  estimation. 
I  feel  that  it  has  been  a  great  privilege  to  be  a 
co-laborer  with  him  in  this  work  of  education  in 
this  Commonwealth. 

I  have  listened  to-day  with  great  interest,  and 
some  of  these  remarks  have  caused  me  to  see 
ghosts ;  I  saw  the  ghost  of  sectarianism.  I  do  not 
like  that  word.  We  ought  not  to  use  it  to-day.  I 
thank  God  that  I  live  in  Kentucky  and  am  privi- 

57 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

leged  to  work  in  this  Commonwealth  when  that 
word  has  been  put  aside.     (Applause.) 

I  know  that  in  the  development  of  this  institu- 
tion President  Patterson  has  only  achieved  a  tithe 
of  that  which  has  been  in  his  mind  and  in  his 
heart.  Much  as  he  may  rejoice  over  the  University 
as  it  stands  here  to-day,  yet  to  him  it  is  incom- 
plete; he  has  projected  himself  into  the  future, 
and  I  venture  the  statement  that  he  sees  in  his 
own  mind  at  this  time  a  vision  of  a  university 
that  he  shall  not  be  privileged  to  see  in  reality, 
but  the  vision  is  his ;  that  which  shall  come  in  the 
days  that  are  yet  before  us,  that  haa  already  been 
realized  in  his  thought  and  purpose. 

I  desire  to  say  here  now  just  this  word  of  con- 
clusion, that  whatever  has  been  in  the  past,  that 
whatever  dissensions  there  may  have  been  in  the 
educational  life  of  this  great  Commonwealth,  that 
the  time  of  dissension  has  passed  away;  that  no 
longer  shall  one  institution  array  itself  against  an- 
other, and  no  longer  shall  one  element  of  the  edu- 
cational life  of  this  State  be  alien  to  the  other,  but 
we  shall  realize  that  the  educational  life  and  prog- 
ress and  prosperity  of  this  great  Commonwealth  is 
the  common  cause  of  all.  So  in  the  future  in  the 
development  of  this  University,  I  take  great  pride 
in  saying  for  myself  and  for  the  colleges,  and 
presidents  of  the  other  institutions  of  the  State 
that  we  are  one  in  purpose;  that  this  institu- 
tion shall  go  forward  in  its  life  and  future  of  a 
great  University  representative  of  a  great  State 
without  a  single  jealousy;  without  the  possibility 
of  contention,  but  one,  with  harmonious  work  on 
the  part  of  the  men  who  are  to  make  the  Kentucky 

58 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

of  the  future  in  the  development  of  the  educational 
life  of  the  State.     (Applause.) 

Mr.  President,  accept  our  congratulations,  our 
admiration,  our  love  on  this  day  that  means  so 
much  to  you.    (Applause.) 


59 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 


^hhvtsisi  of  j^eb.  €btDtn  0inVitv 

Mr.  Chairman,  Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
men : — 

^£  am  surprised  in  the  description  my  friend 
^1  has  given  of  the  church  of  which  I  have  the 
^^  honor  to  be  the  pastor,  but  he  left  out  of  it 
the  most  distinguished  member;  it  has  the  honor 
of  having  among  its  membership  our  honored 
President. 

We  read  in  the  Old  Book  that  is  familiar  to  us 
under  the  name  of  Ecclesiastes  that  once  upon  a 
time  there  was  a  little  city  and  in  that  city  dwelt 
but  few  men,  and  a  great  king  came  against  that 
city  and  laid  siege  to  it  and  built  mighty  bulwarks 
against  it;  and  in  that  city  there  was  a  poor  wise 
man,  and  by  his  wisdom  he  delivered  that  city,  but 
alas  no  man  remembered  that  same  wise  man. 
When  I  was  honored  with  an  invitation  to  be  pres- 
ent on  this  happy  occasion  and  to  add  my  little 
words  to  the  words  that  would  be  spoken  my  mind 
for  some  reason  reverted  to  that  old  story,  and  I 
could  not  help  but  draw  a  parallel  somewhat  like 
this :  Once  upon  a  time  there  was  not  a  little  city, 
but  a  little  institution,  so  small  and  so  weak  and 
so  few  in  it,  but  in  that  little  institution  there  was 
a  wise  man — I  know  not  how  poor  he  was — but  he 
was  a  wise  man,  and  when  there  came  against  that 
institution  great  strong  foes  and  laid  siege  to  it  and 
built  their  mighty  bulwarks  against  it,  that  institu- 
tion was  delivered  by  that  same  wise  man,  but  I  am 
60 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Pattersom 

thankful  to  say  for  the  credit  of  all  these  whom  I 
see  here  before  me  to-day  that  they  have  not  for- 
gotten that  same  wise  man.  We  remember  him; 
we  remember  the  work  that  he  did;  we  remember 
the  deliverance  that  he  wrought;  and  we  are  con- 
scious to  some  degree  at  least  of  the  splendid  work 
that  he  has  done,  not  only  in  delivering  the  institu- 
tion from  its  foes  and  in  bringing  it  k>  this  condi- 
tion that  we  see  to-day,  for  as  far  as  the  eye  can 
reach  and  whichever  way  we  turn,  we  see  the  mag- 
nificent results  of  that  great,  heroic,  unconscious, 
able  service  that  he  has  rendered  to  this  institu- 
tion. I  can  not  but  think  when  I  remember  these 
forty  years — I  can  not  but  think  of  another  great 
leader  and  deliverer,  who  led  the  chosen  people 
from  the  bondage  of  Egypt  through  the  weary 
wilderness  to  the  promised  land.  Oh,  who  can  ever 
measure  the  labor  and  the  trials — yes,  I  might  say 
the  agony  of  the  conflict  in  the  service  that  the 
great  leader  rendered  his  people,  to  his  God  and 
to  the  world  ?  And  after  that  forty  years  of  service 
he  brought  them  within  view  of  the  promised  land, 
where  we  stand  to-day  in  regard  to  this  great  insti- 
tution; not  only  in  view  of  the  promised  land,  but 
one  as  he  looks  about  him  and  sees  the  effects  of 
this  service  of  leadership  would  be  led  to  be- 
lieve that  we  have  already  crossed  the  Jordan  and 
entered  upon  our  inheritance. 

Forty  years — long  years,  and  when  those  years 
were  ended  Moses  standing  upon  the  border-land  of 
that  glorious  inheritance  saw  before  him  what  that 
people  whom  he  had  led  were  destined  to  inherit. 

Mr.  President,  you  have  brought  us  to  the 
border-line;  you  have  brought  us  to  the  banks  of 

61 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

this  Jordan.  You  have  been  privileged  to  look 
across  the  river  and  to  see  the  glory  of  the  inherit- 
ance to  which  you  lead  us  in  your  great  work.  But 
sir,  it  is  my  prayer  to-day  for  Kentucky,  for  us 
all,  and  my  wish  in  regard  to  you,  sir,  that  our 
Moses  whose  forty  years  have  ended — that  our 
Moses  may  not  die,  but  that  he  may  be  spared  to 
us  for  possibly  forty  years  longer.     (Applause.) 

I  trust,  sir,  that  when  you  do  lay  down  your 
great  work,  that  there  will  be  another  Joshua,  capa- 
ble of  taking  it  up  and  carrying  it  on  to  comple- 
tion; and  God  grant  that  that  other  Joshua  may 
have  many  more  years  to  study  and  prepare  him- 
self to  take  up  this  work  as  it  falls  from  the  hands 
of  the  Moses  who  laid  it  down,  and  lead  the  people 
on  to  greater  things. 

May  God  bless  you,  and  spare  you,  the  Moses 
whom  we  honor  and  revere  and  thank  to-day. 
(Applause.) 


62 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


^bbresia  of  3l^eb.  Maat  3.  ^p^nrer 

^-^ORTY  \ears  is  a  long  span  when  viewed 
^r  from  rhe  beginning,  but  only  a  thread  of 
^^^  space  when  crossed.  We  thought  our  fa- 
thers were  old  at  forty  but  in  those  childhood 
years  we  looked  upon  the  horizon  as  the  border 
of  the  world.  Experience  has  taught  us  to  revise 
our  judgment. 

To  have  spent  forty  years  in  strenuous,  re- 
sponsible public  service  and  to  have  filled  them 
with  wisdom  and  honor  were  worthy  the  ambition 
and  perseverance  even  of  our  gifted  and  distin- 
guished Scotchman,  the  esteemed  President  of  the 
Kentucky  State  University. 

He  planted  himself  like  a  tree  by  the  water- 
course, bringing  forth  fruit,  and  giving  shelter 
and  shade,  through  four  decades  to  multitudinous 
students,  seeing  them  grow  into  useful  and  patri- 
otic citizenship,  and,  in  the  face  of  many  discour- 
agements, he  making  his  own  high  ideals  dominant 
in  the  realm  of  education.  His  success  commands 
the  gratitude,  as  it  does  the  admiration,  of  all  the 
loyal  and  wide-awake  men  and  women  in  the  Com- 
monwealth of  Kentucky. 

Forty  years  of  honest  toil,  with  tides  of  ad- 
versity flowing  in  and  tides  of  cheer  flowing  out — 
destiny-freighted  years — years  on  which  students 
built  their  eternities — surely  they  demand  this 
reverent  pause  and  hearty  greeting. 

Like  "wine  and  milk"  for  the  soul,  in  the 
golden  chalice  of  education,  has  been  your  long 

63 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

administration  in  tliis  famous  institution.  So, 
honored  President,  as  a  representative  of  that  re- 
ligion that  carries  the  undying  torch  of  truth  and 
civilization,  I  salute  you,  congratulate  you  and 
wish  for  you  continued  strength  and  providential 
guidance. 

I  love  to  think  of  life  under  the  form  of  sym- 
bols. Each  year  is  a  book;  each  day  is  a  page; 
every  hour  is  a  line  and  every  waking  moment  a 
chosen  word.  Before  such  a  library  of  sacred  vol- 
umes we  may  stand  with  bowed  heads  and  thank- 
ful hearts,  as  Agasiz  stood  among  his  students  on 
the  island  of  Penikese.  What  one  has  done,  and 
been,  and  aspired  to  become,  is  written  in  those 
books  to  be  opened  in  the  great  examination  when 
teachers  and  pupils,  alike,  shall  be  tested  and 
"pitched  or  passed." 

I  love  to  think  of  life,  also,  as  a  grand  orches- 
tra. Every  year  is  an  instrument  discoursing 
music.  All  the  instruments  mingle  their  melodies 
into  harmony,  though  sometimes  in  a  minor  strain, 
with  their  creseendos  and  diminuendos,  but  reach- 
ing at  length  a  climax  of  rapturous  sweetness  and 
triumphant  joy. 

The  past  calls  us  to  remember.  The  future 
meets  us  with  its  message  and  its  smile  and  bids 
us  to  labor  in  hope  and  in  love.  The  past  is  a 
sea;  the  future  is  a  shore;  the  present  is  a  grain 
of  sand  washed  by  the  wave  and  thrown  back  into 
the  broad  bosom  of  the  deep.  Or,  to  use  another 
figure,  the  past  is  a  sea;  the  future  is  the  rising 
tide ;  and  the  present  is  the  turn  of  the  tide  home- 
ward. 

Steele  once  wrote  that  "a  healthy  old  fellow, 
64 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

if  not  a  fool,  is  the  happiest  man  alive."  In  youth 
the  green  leaves  of  the  forest  shut  out  the  light; 
but  M^hen  the  leaves  fall  the  stars  appear. 

Dr.  Holland,  in  his  essay  on  "How  to  Grow 
Old,"  says  the  way  to  keep  young  is  to  love.  Love 
the  young  and  keep  in  vital  touch  with  them.  Let 
the  shuttle  of  youth  throw  its  golden  threads  of 
sunshine  into  the  dull,  gray,  warp  of  age.  Love 
your  wife,  if  you  have  one — and  if  not,  get  one  if 
you  can — love  your  fellows  in  their  struggles  and 
their  sins;  and  love  God,  your  Guardian  and 
Friend.  Love  is  the  great  elixer  of  life.  The  man 
of  vision  and  of  love  can  never  grow  old  in  spirit 
even  as  the  man  of  faith  can  never  die. 

As  the  mountain  among  the  hills ;  as  the  ocean 
among  the  seas;  as  the  rose  among  the  flowers; 
as  the  oak  among  the  trees  and  as  the  sun  among 
the  stars,  so  is  love  among  the  rejuvenating  virtues 
and  graces. 

I  sympathize  with  the  sentiment  of  Oliver  Wen- 
dell Holmes,  when,  at  the  age  of  three-score  and 
ten,  he  went  back  to  Harvard,  his  alma  mater,  and 
thus  spoke  to  men  who  half  a  century  before  had 
been  his  classmates  and  his  chums: 

"Has  there  any  old  fellow  got  mixed  with  'the 

boys  ?' 
If  there  has,  take  him  out  without  making  a  noise ; 
Hang  the  catalogue's  cheat  and  the  almanac's  spite. 
Old  time  is  a  liar ;  we're  twenty  to-night. 

*^es,  we're  boys;  always  playing  with  tongue  or 
with  pen. 

65 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

And  I  sometimes  have  asked,  shall  we  ever  be  men  ? 
Shall  we  always  be  laughing  and  happy  and  gay 
Till  the  last  dear  companion  drops,  smiling  away  ? 

"Then  here's  to  our  manhood,  its  gold  and  its  gray, 
The  frosts  of  its  winter,  the  dews  of  its  May. 
And,  when  we  are  done  with  our  life-lasting  toys, 
Dear   Father,   take   care   of   Thy  children — 'The 
Boys !' 


66 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


l^marfeB,  Vxv^il  |9.  iHoore,  Seprtsipnting 
tt)e  ^tutient  poDp 

3  doubt  not  that  many  of  you  think  me  quite 
presumptuous  to  dare  appear  on  the  same 
platform  with  such  notable  speakers  as  have 
addressed  you  this  afternoon.  And,  indeed,  I  am 
more  than  willing  to  admit  that  under  ordinary 
circumstances  I  would  hardly  place  myself  in  a 
position  where  the  fullness  of  my  inexperience 
could  be  so  readily  apprehended  by  the  unpleasant 
but  very  human  process  of  comparison. 

I  believe,  however,  on  this  occasion  I  have  a 
decided  advantage  over  those  who  have  preceded, 
me,  in  at  least  one  particular,  one  which  I  hope 
will  make  up  for  my  disadvantages  in  point  of 
ability.  For  the  past  four  years  I  have  enjoyed 
the  privilege  of  being  under  the  care  and  guidance 
of  him  to  whom  we  join  in  paying  tribute  this 
afternoon.  You  gentlemen  have  known  him  as  a 
man  among  men,  a  scholar  among  scholars,  a 
fighter  among  fighters.  You  have  met  him  on  the 
battlefield  of  life,  most  of  you  as  followers  and 
friends,  some  perhaps,  at  times,  as  foes.  In  either 
case,  you  can  testify  to  his  broad  learning,  his 
remarkable  ability,  his  tireless  energy  and  his 
heroic  courage.  You  have  seen  him,  armor  on, 
sword  drawn,  the  light  of  battle  in  his  eye,  ready 
and  anxious  to  wage  unceasing  war  for  his  glorious 
cause. 

I,  as  one  of  the  many  for  whom  he  has  given 

67 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

his  life-work,  have  seen  him  when  he  had  sheathed 
his  sword,  put  away  his  armor,  and  with  that 
serene  peacefulness  of  the  truly  noble  victor,  sat 
by  his  own  fireside,  surrounded  by  his  boys  and 
girls,  working  for  them,  planning  with  them,  en- 
couraging them  in  his  own  inimitable  way.  No 
sign  of  conflict  there,  no  evidence  that  all  we  then 
enjoyed  was  the  result  of  his  sacrifices,  no  refer- 
ence to  a  life  of  never-ending  endeavor  for  us ;  and 
yet,  an  atmosphere  of  quiet  dignity  and  calm  con- 
tent, which  we  instinctively  knew  could  come  only 
from  a  knowledge  of  obstacles,  one  by  one,  sur- 
mounted, and  Herculean  tasks  surely  and  safely 
accomplished. 

President  Patterson  has  ever  been  the  friend 
and  adviser  of  his  students,  guiding  them  in  the 
safest  paths,  assisting  them  along  the  most  needed 
lines,  always  ready  to  lend  a  helping  hand  to  the 
deserving,  and  striving  from  the  beginning  to 
make  his  University,  and  I  think  I  use  the  pro- 
noun advisedly,  a  school  where  rich  and  poor 
should  meet  on  a  common  level.  He  knows  no 
such  thing  as  partiality,  and  his  favors,  numerous 
as  they  have  been,  are  dispensed  on  the  common 
ground  of  merit. 

A  kind  and  generous  protector,  a  helpful  and 
understanding  teacher,  and  still  a  strict  and  thor- 
ough disciplinarian — such  has  he  been  to  us,  and 
as  we  leave  him  we  carry  with  us  the  memory  of 
a  man.    Could  we  receive  a  richer  endowment  ? 

To  pay  the  debt  of  gratitude  owed  by  Ken- 
tucky's boys  and  girls  for  forty  years  of  such  mag- 
nificent service  is  a  task  too  great  for  mere  words ; 
and  to  give  even  an  idea  of  our  appreciation  is 
68 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

more  than  I  would  attempt.  But,  on  behalf  of 
my  eight  hundred  fellow  students  to  whom  he  be- 
queaths this  rich  heritage,  on  behalf  of  hundreds 
who  point  to  him  as  the  author  of  their  successes, 
on  behalf  of  every  man  or  woman,  boy  or  girl,  who 
has  had  the  opportunity  of  knowing  him  as  only 
his  students  ever  know  him,  let  me  pay  my  tribute 
of  admiration,  affection  and  respect  to  the  truest, 
noblest  and  best  friend  education  ever  had  in 
Kentucky — President  Patterson. 


69 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 


^WKtsu  of  Alpi)a  $ui)i)arti«  mtmhev 
of  ti)e  Qllasifii  of  1910 


0 


NE  and  thirty  years  ago,  the  Agricultural 
and  Mechanical  College,  now  the  State 
University  of  Kentucky,  after  an  appren- 
ticeship of  thirteen  years  began  to  exist  as  a  sepa- 
rate institution.  To  the  casual  observer  no  event 
could  seem  more  insignificant.  The  recognized 
colleges  and  some  of  the  ablest  teachers  in  the 
Commonwealth  scarcely  deigned  to  notice  it.,  but 
the  act  that  freed  thousands  of  African  slaves  in 
the  State  at  the  close  of  the  War  of  the  Eebellion 
was  in  a  sense  a  mere  trivial  affair  when  compai-ed 
with  the  emancipation  of  this  institution  from  the 
mother  University. 

Then  began  a  long  and  dark  struggle  for  the 
existence  of  the  new  college,  but  guided  by  the 
hand  of  her  young  captain  whose  armour  was 
forged  among  the  hills  of  his  native  Scotland,  she 
triumphed  over  all.  Then  those  who  had  refused 
to  recognize  her  becoming  afraid  of  her  power 
joined  their  forces  for  her  destruction.  Again  the 
battle  ensued,  and  in  the  thickest  of  the  fight  her 
foster  father  and  knightly  champion  could  hear 
the  faint  cry  of  generations  yet  to  be :  "Watchman, 
what  of  the  night?"  And  from  the  depth  of  his 
heart  came  the  strong  reply:  "The  morning 
cometh,"  for  as  the  lofty  mountain  peaks  are  first 
to  catch  the  beams  of  the  rising  sun,  he  was  first 
to  predict  the  future  greatness  of  the  institution 
70 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

that  he  had  so  successfully  piloted.  Not  only  has 
he  combatted  and  vanquished  every  assailant,  but 
through  forty  years  of  strenuous  toil  he  has  built 
up  a  University  which  bids  fair  to  surpass  any 
south  of  the  Ohio. 

It  is  seldom  that  in  the  annals  of  history  can 
be  found  a  record  parallel  to  his.  What  Ken- 
tuckian  has  made  a  greater  sacrifice  for  the  cause 
of  education  in  his  State  than  our  noble  Presi- 
dent? Had  he  sought  the  field  of  politics,  he 
doubtless  would  have  found  a  harvest  ripe.  Had 
he  entered  into  the  business  world,  his  success 
would  have  been  bounded  only  by  human  proba- 
bilities. But  he  has  been  content  to  give  his  whole 
life  to  the  upbuilding  of  the  State  University  of 
Kentucky,  which  will  remain  a  monument  to  his 
memory  as  long  as  higher  education  shall  be  the 
watchword  of  the  people,  or  until  the  nation  shall 
cease  to  exist. 

And  now,  President  Patterson,  as  a  representa- 
tive from  the  student  body  of  the  State  Uni- 
versity of  Kentucky  I  bring  to  you  a  message: 
From  the  fathers  and  mothers  from  a  thousand 
happy  homes,  the  education  of  whose  sons  and 
daughters  is  entrusted  to  your  care,  from  the 
mountains,  the  Blue  Grass,  the  Pennyrile  and  the 
Purchase,  from  every  county  in  the  grand  old 
Commonwealth,  from  the  future  manhood  and 
womanhood  of  the  State,  her  only  hope,  from  the 
members  of  that  society  which  you  have  so  liber- 
ally endowed  and  which  bears  your  revered  name, 
from  those  who  have  had  the  marked  privilege  of 
being  members  of  your  own  classes,  from  the 
hearts  of  a  loyal  and  loving  student  body  I  bring 

71 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

you  this  greeting.  It  is  the  wish  of  each  and  all 
that  you  continue  in  that  office  which  you  have  so 
ably  filled  for  forty  years,  until  He  to  whom  we 
must  all  give  an  account  of  our  deeds  done  on 
earth  says:  "Well  done,  thou  good  and  faithful 
servant :  Thou  hast  been  faithful  over  a  few  things, 
I  will  make  thee  ruler  over  many  things;  enter 
thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord." 


72 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


a^emarfefi  of  J^rof.  fameji  ^.  WBWt 

Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: — 

3F  time  permitted,  I  would  be  glad  to  tell  you 
of  some  of  the  struggles  that  this  old  gentle- 
man, my  personal  friend,  and  I  have  to- 
gether passed  through  during  the  long  years  of 
our  association.  My  first  acquaintance  with  him 
was  when  I  entered  Kentucky  (now  Transylvania) 
University,  forty-four  years  ago.  Since  that  time 
there  has  been  scarcely  a  day,  when  we  were  both 
in  this  city,  that  I  have  not  seen  more  or  less  of 
him.  Perhaps  no  man  knows  better  than  I  the 
many  perplexing  questions  he  has  met  and  the 
obstacles  he  has  overcome  in  his  long,  able,  and 
successful  administration.  Some  of  these  have 
been  known  to  the  public,  but  only  his  most 
intimate  associates  have  known  of  the  many  sleep- 
less nights  and  days  of  anxiety  which  he  has  ex- 
perienced. It  is,  however,  growing  late  and  I 
must  not  detain  you,  but  I  will  ask  your  attention 
to  the  reading  of  two  letters  which  have  been  re- 
ceived in  the  course  of  the  preparation  for  this 
celebration.  One  of  these  is  from  President  H.  C. 
White  of  the  University  of  Georgia,  and  reads  as 
follows : 

University  of  Georgia,  Athens,  Ga. 
May  25, 1909. 
Director  M.  A.   Scovell, 

Lexington,  Ky. 
My  Dear  Director  Scovell : — 

I  have  just  returned  home  after  an  absence  of  ten 

73 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

days — having  attended  the  Lake  Mohonk  (N.  Y.)  Con- 
ference on  International  Arbitration — and  as  my  mail 
was  not  forwarded  I  find  your  very  kind  favor  on  my 
return.  I  very  much  regret  the  delay  in  acknowledg- 
ment but  have  wired  you  at  once.  I  am  genuinely  dis- 
tressed that  I  may  not  accept  your  very  kind  and 
flattering  invitation.  It  would  give  me  the  utmost 
pleasure  to  be  permitted  to  say  a  few  words  on  the 
occasion  of  the  completion  of  Doctor  Patterson's  forty- 
year  term  of  useful  and  distinguished  service.  It  is  a 
noteworthy  event  in  the  history  of  American  education. 
I  should  require  no  long  time  in  preparation  of  what 
I  would  wish  to  say.  Unfortunately  I  have  accepted 
an  invitation  to  deliver  the  Commencement  Address 
at  one  of  our  Southern  Colleges  on  June  1st,  and  there- 
fore I  cannot  be  with  you  that  day  in  Lexington.  I  am 
very,  very  sorry.  Will  you  not  do  me  the  favor  to 
express  for  me  my  very  great  interest  in  the  event, 
my  hearty  appreciation  of  the  valuable  and  historic 
services  of  President  Patterson,  my  best  wishes  for 
his  health,  happiness  and  continuance  in  good  works, 
and  my  sincere  wishes  for  the  continued  prosperity  of 
your  great  institution  which  has  owed  so  much  to 
President  Patterson's  fostering  care.  With  thanks  to 
your  Board  of  Trustees  and  to  you  personally,  I  am. 
Very  faithfully  yours, 

H.  C.  White. 

The  other  is  a  letter  from  a  gentleman  known 
to  many  Lexington  people,  the  Eev.  Dr.  Ethelbert 
Dudley  Warfield,  who  was  born  and  reared  in  this 
city  and  whose  education,  as  you  will  find  from 
this  letter,  began  under  the  instruction  and  guid- 
ance of  the  learned  scholar  and  able  teacher  in 
whose  honor  we  are  met  this  afternoon. 

Lafayette  College,  Easton,  Pennsylvania. 
Easton,  Pennsylvania. 
My  Dear  Prof.  White:— 

I  greatly  regret  my  inability  to  be  present  and  par- 
74 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

ticipate  in  person  in  the  recognition  that  is  being 
given  to  my  beloved  teacher,  President  Patterson.  I 
was  a  student  in  the  State  College  from  1877  to  1879 
and  during  that  time  I  enjoyed  the  private  tuition  of 
President  Patterson  in  Latin  and  Greek.  This  brought 
me  into  very  intimate  relations  with  him,  and  I  can 
never  forget  the  delightful  hours  that  I  spent  in  his 
study  and  under  the  pine  trees  near  his  house  at  the 
Woodlands — the  villa  ad  pinas — as  I  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  call  it  during  the  years  that  have  flown.  Not 
only  did  President  Patterson  introduce  me  to  the  de- 
lightful atmosphere  of  Classical  scholarship,  but  he 
awakened,  especially  in  connection  with  Herodotus,  a 
deep  interest  in  history  that  has  been  one  of  the  great 
inspirations  of  my  life,  which  took  me  to  Oxford  to 
study  under  Professor  Stubbs,  and  brought  me  to  a 
professorship  of  history  in  due  season.  I  also  learned 
from  him  to  appreciate  the  quaint  humor  and  strong 
character  of  the  Scotchman,  an  appreciation  which  was 
deepened  by  contact  with  those  other  great  Scotch 
teachers  who  were  in  succession  to  be  my  preceptors, 
President  James  McCosh  of  Princeton,  and  Benjamin 
Jowett,  the  Master  of  Balliol,  who  was  the  Vice  Chan- 
cellor of  Oxford  when  I  went  thither.  I  rejoice  that 
President  Patterson  has  come  to  so  ripe  an  age,  to  the 
full  measure  of  recognition  of  his  service  as  an  edu- 
cator, and  that  he  has  seen  the  State  College  reach  the 
natural  development  into  the  State  University.  I  trust 
that  he  will  find  on  this  occasion  the  sincere  regard  of 
his  many  colleagues  and  students  a  more  acceptable 
tribute  than  any  praise  that  might  be  brought  to  crown 
his  long  period  of  service.  I  rejoice  that  I  am  per- 
mitted in  this  measure  to  contribute  to  the  testimony 
of  the  occasion. 

Ethelbert  D.  Warfield, 
Pres.  and  Prof,  of  History  Lafayette  College. 


75 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 


$rr£(aient  Sattersion'fii  3$itplv 

If  I  could  persuade  myself  that  I  deserve  half 
of  what  has  been  said  concerning  me  this  after- 
noon, I  should  have  a  much  better  opinion  of 
myself  than  ever  heretofore.  I  thank  you,  gentle- 
men and  the  institutions  which  same  of  you 
represent,  for  the  hearty  and  generous  recogni- 
tion which  you  have  accorded  to  my  ability,  my 
attainments  and  my  work.  The  task  of  building 
up  an  institution  of  learning  is  always  an  arduous 
one.  A  college  or  university  reverses  the  classical 
axiom,  "A  poet  is  born,  not  made."  A  university 
grows  by  development,  by  expansion,  by  accretion. 
Its  growth  is  that  of  an  organism.  It  does  not 
come  into  existence  a  finished  product.  Those 
institutions  are  the  best  which  setting  out  from 
small  beginnings  expand  symmetrically.  The  old 
universities  of  Europe  and  the  best  universities  of 
America  have  attained  their  present  proportions 
through  this  law  of  development.  Bonn  and  Goet- 
tingen  in  Germany,  the  Sorbonne  in  France,  Sala- 
manca and  Valladolid  in  Spain,  Magdalen  and 
Balliol  and  Christ  Church  in  Oxford,  King's  and 
Trinity  in  Cambridge,  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh  in 
Scotland,  Harvard  and  Yale  in  America,  have 
centuries  behind  them.  They  are  hoary  with  age 
and  with  honors.  Their  prestige  and  reputation 
could  not  be  exchanged  for  endowments.  The 
glory  of  their  achievements  are  a  halo  forevermore. 

The  State  University  of  Kentucky,  to  which 
through  me  you  have  given  your  meed  of  generous 

76 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

recognition,  is  the  youngest  of  American  universi- 
ties, and  is  just  beginning  the  career  of  usefulness 
and  honor  which  many  of  those  on  this  platform 
and  in  this  audience  will,  I  have  no  doubt,  live  to 
see  it  attain.  When  listening  to  the  eulogies  on 
my  relation  to  the  growth  of  the  State  University 
of  Kentucky,  I  could  not  help  recalling  the  lines 
of  Wordsworth: 

"Like  winds  that  sweep  the  mountain  summit, 
Like  waves  that  own  no  guiding  hand. 
How  fast  has  brother  followed  brother 
From  sunlight  to  the  sunless  land." 

Nearly  all  of  those  who  opposed  me  thirty 
years  ago,  when  the  State  College,  now  the  State 
University,  was  passing  through  the  crisis  of  its 
fate,  and  nearly  all  of  the  few  who  stood  by  me 
in  the  fierce  struggle  for  existence  which  it  en- 
countered, have  gone.  So  true  it  is  that  "the 
places  which  know  us  now  shall  soon  know  us  no 
more." 

The  antagonisms  and  animosities  engendered 
by  the  contest  of  thirty  years  ago  have  been  molli- 
fied by  time  and  are  now  practically  extinguished. 
An  era  of  good  feeling  has  begun  and  all  the  insti- 
tutions represented  here  are  co-operating  loyally 
for  the  advancement  of  the  common  cause  in  which 
we  are  all  interested. 

Now  that  we  have  entered  upon  the  University 
stage  in  our  educational  progress,  it  behooves  us  to 
adjust  ourselves  to  altered  conditions  and  to  en- 
deavor to  realize  for  the  Commonwealth  the  just 
expectations  which  the  general  public  will  doubt- 
less entertain. 

17 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

The  university  of  to-day,  generally  speaking, 
retains  and  must  retain  for  some  time  to  come 
under-graduate  instruction  in  collegiate  work  in 
connection  witli  advanced  work  in  original  investi- 
gation and  research,  which  is,  as  I  take  it,  the 
proper  function  of  the  university  of  to-day,  and 
much  more  of  the  university  of  the  future.  We 
have  already  fallen  into  line  with  the  work  done 
by  the  average  State  University  in  America,  and 
I  am  glad  to  say  that  in  the  Association  of  State 
Universities,  we  are  received  as  members  of  this 
brotherhood  of  learning  upon  equal  terms  with 
the  rest. 

What  relation  the  university  of  the  future  must 
sustain  to  denominational  education  no  one  can 
foretell.  If  I  may  upon  this  occasion  hazard  a 
forecast  and  a  hope,  it  would  be  something  like 
the  following:  That  the  State  University,  amply 
endowed  by  the  Commonwealth,  should  provide 
all  that  can  be  taught  in  secular  education,  in 
language,  in  literature,  in  science  and  in  art,  em- 
bracing the  whole  range  of  realized  knowledge, 
past  and  present;  everything  indeed  that  can  be 
taught  within  the  ample  scope  and  compass  of  the 
provision  thus  made  by  the  State  for  advanced 
educational  training;  that  the  largest  opportunity 
should  be  afforded  to  the  student  to  appropriate 
and  to  assimilate  what  is  already  known  and 
to  prosecute  original  research  in  any  depart- 
ment of  scientific  work,  to  which  his  inclination 
leads  him  to  devote  his  energies;  that  the  State 
should  invite  the  existing  denominational  institu- 
tions, whose  endowments  do  not  warrant  their 
undertaking  anything  beyond  collegiate  work,  to 

78 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

become  affiliated  institutions  of  the  State  Univer- 
sity, admitting  their  alumni  ad  eundum  to  any  of 
the  advanced  courses  of  study  and  research  for 
which  they  are  prepared;  that  the  State  should 
still  further  invite  each  denomination  within  the 
Commonwealth,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile,  Catholic 
or  Protestant,  to  place  its  theological  seminary 
within  the  ample  precincts  of  the  University 
grounds,  and  offer  to  their  theological  students  the 
benefit  of  free  tuition  in  any  branch  of  secular 
learning  with  which  they  may  desire  to  become 
familiar;  that  these  denominations  endow  their 
respective  seminaries  as  liberally  as  they  may,  pro- 
viding for  everything  that  can  be  taught  bearing 
directly  or  indirectly  upon  the  widest  theological 
training ;  that  each  control  its  endowment  and  its 
faculty  and  its  course  of  instruction,  without  inter- 
ference from  the  State  University ;  that  reciprocal 
independence  and  co-ordination  and  good  fellow- 
ship should  be  maintained,  each  seeking  to  co- 
operate with  all  the  rest  in  the  advancement  and 
development  of  a  scholarship  secular  and  theo- 
logical commensurate  with  the  necessities  of  the 
age.  This  relationship,  I  apprehend,  would  Chris- 
tianize secular  education  and  liberalize  theological 
culture  and  training. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  truth  is  one,  but  it  is 
likewise  true  that  the  individual  manifestations  of 
truth  are  infinitely  varied.  Xo  principle  of  science, 
I  hold,  can  be  in  opposition  to  the  fundamental 
principles  upon  which  a  rational  system  of  the- 
ology must  be  built.  Science  and  religion  cannot 
be  antagonistic,  so  long  as  each  restricts  itself 
within  its  own  proper  sphere.     The  principles  of 

79 


FoKTiETH  Anniversary. 

science  and  the  truths  of  religion  interlace  and  are 
interwoven  one  with  the  other  and  what  God  has 
joined  together  man  should  not  attempt  to  put 
asunder.  Each,  however,  must  learn  to  know  its 
respective  limitations.  The  limits  of  religious 
thought,  on  the  one  hand,  have  their  counterpart 
in  the  limitations  of  secular  knowledge  upon  the 
other.  I  do  not  anticipate  that  the  time  will  ever 
come  when  the  Decalogue  or  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  must  be  revised  and  recast  to  meet  the  de- 
mands of  scientific  truth. 

I  am  not  greatly  disturbed  by  the  disquieting 
utterances  of  Ladd  or  Jordan,  of  Howison  or 
Jastrow  or  Munsterburg,  with  all  their  ability.  I 
do  not  apprehend  a  Eenaissance  led  by  them  in  the 
Twentieth  Century.  I  do  not  anticipate  any  seri- 
ous disturbance  of  the  existing  ethical  and  re- 
ligious forces  from  any  system  of  ethics  having 
as  its  basis  gravitation  and  the  correlation  of  the 
physical  forces.  The  telescope  and  the  microscope 
and  the  spectroscope,  electrons,  atoms  and  mole- 
cules, stupendous  facts  in  the  physical  universe, 
will,  when  reverently  interpreted,  conserve  and 
strengthen,  but  will  never  provide  either  the  ful- 
crum or  the  lever  for  the  overthrow  of  the  ethics 
or  religion  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament. 

The  incandescent  light  may,  with  its  brilliancy, 
dazzle  the  inventor  and  his  admirers,  when  they 
stand  within  the  circumference  illuminated  by  its 
glare.  But  it  would  be  a  grave  mistake  to  suppose 
that  one  such  light  or  a  hundred  million  such 
lights  can  ever  supersede  the  sun  in  the  heavens. 
The  greatness  and  the  littleness  of  man  are  to  us 
a  perpetual  wonder.  "Oh,  what  a  miracle  to  man 
80 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

is    man,    a    beam   ethereal    sullied    and    absorpt, 
though  sullied  and  dishonored,  still  divine." 

Diderot  and  Helvetius,  D'Alembert  and  Rous- 
seau had  their  day  and  disturbed  the  souls  of  men. 
as  the  vanguard  of  the  new  philosophies  of  our  own 
day  are  doing  now,  but  their  crusade  against 
Christianity  has  become  a  thing  of  the  past,  and 
not  one  in  a  thousand  now  knows  that  they  lived 
and  cast  their  pebble  on  the  waters. 

The  time  will  never  come  when  a  morality 
grounded  upon  the  crass  materialism  of  the  gospel 
of  mammon  will  ever  supersede  the  deliverance 
made  upon  Mt.  Sinai,  or  the  still  grander  deliver- 
ance of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  In  the  ages 
to  come,  whatever  progress  may  be  made,  and  we 
are  moving  forward  by  strides  mighty  and  rapid, 
every  year  making  the  achievements  already  won 
the  basis  for  the  attainment  of  still  higher  and 
mightier  conquests  over  nature,  it  will  still  be  true 
that  in  the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens 
and  the  earth;  it  will  still  be  true  that  the  chief 
end  of  man  is  to  glorify  God  and  to  enjoy  him 
forever;  it  will  still  be  true  that  life  and  immor- 
tality have  been  brought  to  light  through  the 
Gospel  of  the  Son  of  God ;  it  will  be  true  that 
"Only  that  which  made  us  meant  us  to  be  mightier 

by  and  by, 
Set  the  sphere  of  all  the  boundless  heaven  within 

the  human  eye, 
Sent    the    shadow    of    himself,     the    boundless, 

through  the  human  soul. 
Boundless,  inward,  in   the  atom,  boundless,  out- 
ward, in  the  whole." 

Above  all,  whatever  others  may  do,  the  State 

81 


Fortieth  Anniversary, 

University  of  Kentucky  must  keep  itself  upon  a 
high  moral  plane,  dominated  not  necessarily  by  a 
dogmatic  but  by  a  religious  sentiment,  reflecting 
the  religious  convictions  of  the  people  of  our  Com- 
monwealth. Nothing  must  be  taught  from  the  ros- 
trum or  in  the  recitation  room  which,  either  in- 
directly or  by  innuendo,  should  unsettle  the  faith 
of  any.  Our  Commonwealth  is  Christian,  our 
nation,  the  great  American  nation,  is  happily 
Christian.  It  recognizes  its  obligations  to  the  past, 
that  a  free  church  in  a  free  state  are  the  inalienable 
inheritance  of  the  imperial  stock  to  which  they 
belong,  and  that  from  the  new  religious  enthusi- 
asm and  hope  and  aspirations,  infused  into  man- 
kind by  the  advent  of  the  Savior,  all  that  is  worth 
anything  in  modern  civilization  is  derived. 

"There  is  an  old  belief 

That  on  some  distant  shore, 
Beyond  the  sphere  of  grief. 

Dear  friends  shall  meet  once  more. 

"Beyond  the  sphere  of  time 

And  sin  and  fate's  control, 
Serene  in  changeless  prime 

Of  body  and  of  soul. 

"That  creed  I  fain  would  keep. 

That  hope  I'll  not  forego. 
Eternal  be  my  sleep. 

Unless  I  waken  so." 


82 


Pres,  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 


ADDENDUM 

James  Hennebp  ^attergon 

^ater  mnibneiUti*  ftentutbienisist 

AN  APPRECIATION 
By    WILLIAM    BENJAMIN   SMITH    LL,  D.. 

^HEN"  we  lay  open  side  by  side  the  map 
and  the  history  of  the  earth,  more 
especially  the  biographical  history,  we 
are  struck  by  a  remarkable  unevenness  in  distri- 
bution. Great  as  is  the  inequality  of  fertility, 
ranging  from  tropical  luxuriance  to  frozen  wastes 
and  burning  saharas,  we  find  it  fully  matched  in 
the  irregularity  of  the  outcrop  of  distinguished 
humanity.  For  untold  ages  the  history  enacted 
over  immense  regions  by  innumerable  throngs  of 
human  beings  has  remained  wholly  unhistorical. 
Like  an  endless  crop  of  plants,  even  weeds,  uncon- 
scious of  the  seasons,  the  undistinguished  genera^ 
tions  have  sprung  up  perpetually  from  the  earth 
and  just  as  perpetually  have  sunk  back  again  to 
undistinguished  rest  in  their  native  sod.  A  tre- 
mendous fact,  before  which  the  soul  shrinks  back 
in  terror.  Is  then  all  history  so  futile,  as  aimless 
as  the  paleozoic  ages,  as  monotonous  and  weary  as 
the  ocean's  barren  fields  of  wandering  foam? 

It  is  a  great  relief  to  turn  from  these  desert 
tracts  of  time  and  space  to  certain  favored  re- 
gions, to  certain  garden-spots  where  man  has 
sprouted  up  and  grown  aloft  and  widely,  where 

history  has  enacted  itself  on  a  sublime  and  sig- 

83 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

nificant  scale,  where  the  drama  of  life  has  unrolled 
itself  in  pomp  and  majesty,  and  where  purpose 
and  aim  appear  upon  the  stage  and  point  towards 
eternal  values.  Such  in  ancient  days  were  in 
some  measure  the  valley  of  the  Nile  and  the  Twin- 
Kiver-Land  of  Mesopotamia  and  the  rugged 
mountain  district  of  Canaan;  later  the  serrated 
shores  and  olive-clad  hills  of  Hellas,  the  sunlit- 
summits  and  shady  vales  of  Italy,  later  still  the 
valleys  of  the  Vo  and  the  Arno,  and  all  Northern 
Europe.  But  even  here  in  these  regions  so  fer- 
tile in  greatness,  the  distinctions  have  been  most 
notable.  Tf  you  stain  the  map  of  France  or  of 
England  or  Germany,  each  region  according  to 
it-s  fecundity  in  illustrious  men,  the  map  will  be 
parti-colored  in  the  extreme,  showing  side  by  side 
the  faintest  and  the  deepest  dyes. 

A  very  conspicuous  and  industrious  school  of 
thinkers  would  refer  pretty  nearly  all  of  these 
ditferences  to  the  influence  of  the  environment, 
particularly  the  educational  and  social  environ- 
ment. Such  are  1\I.  Odin  and  his  distinguished 
disciple,  Mr.  I^ester  Frank  Ward,  of  Washington. 
This  is  not  the  place  to  expose  the  fallacies  that 
infect  their  reasoning.  Suffice  it  to  affirm  that 
fallacies  are  fatally  present  therein,  and  that  the 
far  more  potent  factor  of  Heredity  refuses  to  be 
overlooked.  Of  all  the  facts  of  life  on  this  planet, 
the  fact  of  Inheritance,  of  the  transmission  of 
qualities,  physical  and  psychical,  mental  and 
moral,  from  parent  to  child  immediately  or  me- 
diately, after  intervals  of  generations,  is  by  far 
the  most  impressive  and  most  important.  The 
84 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

recent  formal  recognition  of  Genetics  (at  the 
Universit}^  of  Cambridge)  is  a  landmark  in  the 
development  of  science. 

The  career  and  the  personality  that  we  have 
before  lis  for  consideration  not  only  illustrate,  but 
very  naturally  provoke  the  foregoing  reflections. 
James  Kennedy  Patterson  was  the  son  of  Andrew 
Patterson  and  his  wife,  Janet  Patterson  (nee  Ken- 
nedy), of  Dumbartonshire,  Scotland.  This  name 
is  one  to  dwell  on.  Its  classic  form  Caledonia, 
in  its  pentasyllable  fullness  and  resonance,  seems 
better  to  befit  the  largeness  and  eminence  with 
which  this  mountain  region  has  bulked  in  history. 
A  country  in  the  highest  degree  picturesque, 
riotous  in  wild  and  ravishing  beauty  that  passes 
over  at  every  turn  into  rugged  majesty  or  stern, 
daring,  and  terrible  sublimity,  where  nature  al- 
ternately charms  and  stupefies,  smiting  with  one 
hand  and  caressing  with  the  other,  Scotland  has 
bred  a  people  of  the  most  marked  variety,  and  has 
contrilmted  far  beyond  the  measure  of  her  num- 
bers to  the  undying  annals  of  our  globe.  The 
features  that  distinguish  the  Scot  are  too  well 
known  to  call  for  minute  statement.  Above  all 
else  he  is  an  aecomplisher.  Xature  has  indeed 
forced  him  from  the  start  into  a  severe  and  pro- 
tracted struggle  wherein  only  victory  could  secure 
life.  A  stern  and  relentless  selection  has  molded 
the  national  character  into  features  of  strength, 
courage,  endurance,  hardihood,  patience,  persist- 
ence, and  unweariable  energy.  Along  with  these 
go  the  sturdy  virtues  of  honesty,  integrity,  self- 
sacrificing  loyalty,  and  incorruptible  faith.  A 
cliaracter  pre-eminently  to   admire   and  pre-emi- 

85 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

nently  fitted  to  succeed.  It  is  said  in  London  that 
if  a  Scot  be  admitted  to  any  position,  however 
humble,  in  a  business  enterprise,  he  will  surely 
become  the  head  of  the  firm.  Here  in  the  United 
States  it  is  a  familiar  fact  that  the  Scotch  and 
the  Scotch-Irish  elements  have  distinguished  them- 
selves beyond  all  others,  except  possibly  the  Hugue- 
notic,  in  the  making  of  American  history — here, 
where  such  ample  opportunity  lias  presented  itself 
for  the  display  of  executive,  aggressive,  and  ad- 
ministrative qualities.  Of  the  men  who  find  a 
place  in  Who's  Who  in  America,  126  (relatively  a 
very  large  number)  were  born  in  Scotland.  But 
we  also  speak  of  a  severe,  rigorous,  and  inexor- 
able logic,  and  this  power  has  characterized  the 
Caledonian  since  remote  antiquity.  Two  of  the 
greatest,  if  not  the  two  very  greatest,  logicians  of 
the  middle  ages  were  Johannes  Scotus  Erigena 
and  John  Duns  Scotus,  the  Doctor  Subtilis. 
Emerson,  whose  mind  refused  to  move  from  pre- 
miss to  conclusion,  but  insisted  on  beholding  all 
truth  as  self-revealed  in  instantaneous  vision, 
Emerson  speaks  of  the  "insanity  of  dialectic"  that 
possesses  the  soul  of  Scotland. 

But  Caledonia  is  not  only  stern  and  wild.  It 
is  also  sprinkled  all  over,  lowland  and  highland, 
with  si^ots  of  the  tenderest  beauty.  So,  too,  the 
Caledonian  character  is  not  merely  sinewy  and 
strong,  canny  and  subtle,  tough  and  resistant  and 
all-subsiding ;  on  occasion  it  can  show  itself  gentle 
and  sensitive,  kind  and  affectionate,  loving  and 
passionate,  as  well  as  devoted  and  true.  Jeanie 
Deans  is  no  mere  creature  of  the  great  Magician's 


86 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

imagination,  and  even  the  light-hearted  Burns,  in 
the  agony  of  his  soul,  pours  out  his  most  plaintiff 
wail  to  "Mary  in  Heaven." 

I  have  dwelt  at  such  length  on  the  Scotti^^h 
character,  because  in  so  doing  I  have  really  been 
describing  the  subject  of  this  sketch,  who  is  a 
Caledonian  of  the  Caledonians.  It  is  not  often 
indeed  that  we  find  an  indivadual  so  thoroughly 
typical.  President  Patterson  is  a  Scot  to  the 
marrow  of  his  bones.  Dumbarton,  the  county  of 
his  parents,  lies  in  a  long  crescent  just  northwest 
of  Glasgow,  the  city  of  his  birth.  It  is  a  lovely  and 
romantic  region,  rich  in  antiquities,  a  land  of 
mountains,  shooting  up  into  peaks  3,000  feet 
high;  vocal  with  the  commingled  roar  of  a  thou- 
sand cotaracts,  drenched  with  the  vapors  that  rise 
forever  from  the  Atlantic  and  struggle  over  the 
mountain  tops,  made  almost  an  island  by  the  river 
lieven  and  the  convergence  northward  of  Lochs 
Long  and  Lomond,  the  latter  "the  Queen  of  Scot- 
tish lakes" — a  wild  and  beauteous  land  which  the 
.sturdy  and  siterling  qualities  of  the  inhabiters  have 
developed  into  a  region  rich  in  herds  and  flocks, 
smiling  with  liarvests,  and  resounding  with  the 
hum  of  varied  industry. 

The  lineage  of  James  Kennedy  Patterson  is 
a  good  illustration  of  the  homely  adage  that  blood 
will  tell,  even  as  the  invincible  dominance  in  his- 
tory of  certain  national  or  racial  strains  of  blood 
exemplifies  tlie  prepotence  of  Heredity  over  all 
and  every  influence  of  environment.  The  name 
of  Patterson  (or  Paterson)  bulks  largely  in  the 
chronicles  of  Britain.     In  the  Dictionary  of  Na- 

87 


i^'ORTIETH    AnNTVERSARY. 

tional  Bio^aphy  it  is  17  times  entered,  filling 
30  columns.  In  Who's  Who  it  is  also  17  times 
repeated.  The  name  of  Kennedy  ("the  noble 
family  of  Kennedy")  is  even  more  conspicuous. 
Thirty  tim«  it  appears  in  the  Dictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography,  filling  fifty  columns,  and  22 
times  in  Who's  Who.  All  this  stream  of  historic 
blood  seems  to  have  poured  out  from  the  same 
Scotch  fountain,  welling  up  in  the  glens  near 
Glasgow.  Here  was  born  the  subject  of  this  sketch 
the  2fith  of  March,  1833.  It  was  in  the  first 
watch  of  the  morning  of  the  new  modern  day.  The 
sun  was  not  yet  risen,  but  the  whole  sky  was  blush- 
ing with  the  splendid  dawn.  A  new  king  and  a 
new  )ninistry  in  1830 — the  tremendous  struggle 
for  Keform,  running  through  more  than  a  year, 
and  ending  with  the  final  triumph  of  the  People 
over  the  Lords  in  the  Eeform  Act  of  1832.  Then 
followed  in  swift  succession  the  abolition  of 
sin  very  in  the  colonies  (1833)  and  the  poorlaw 
of  1834.  No  wonder  that  the  King  took  fright 
and  dismissed  his  ministry,  calling  on  Sir  Robert 
Peel  (conservative  till  1816)  to  form  another. 
Meantime  Science  was  putting  on  wings  and  In- 
vention was  harnessing  all  the  powers  of  Nature 
to  the  car  of  Progress.  In  1830,  the  first  pas- 
senger train  was  dragged  forward  by  a  locomotive. 
Already,  in  1820,  Ampere  had  founded  electro- 
dynamics in  a  series  of  researches,  experimental 
and  theoretical,  of  surpassing  brilliance.  In  1831 
Faraday  had  discovred  the  induction  of  electric 
currents  and  opened  the  century  of  electricity  in 
wliich  we  still  move.  In  1835  and  1838  Morse 
and  Steinheil,  building  on  earlier  labors,  had  in- 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

vented  the  system  of  electric  telegraphy,  whose 
wonders  accumulate  even  unto  this  da)\  It  is  not 
unjustly  then  that  we  declare  this  decade  to  he 
the  first  in  the  great  century  of  the  Recent  Age. 
Tlie  year  1832  also  beheld  the  setting  of  the  cen- 
tral sun  of  German  literature,  Johann  Wolfgang 
von  Gothe,  as  the  year  1831  had  already  seen  the 
sudden  eclipse  of  Hegel.  In  Britain,  too,  the 
lights  of  the  elder  day  were  one  by  one  extin- 
guisht,  Scott  and  Lamb  in  1832,  Coleridge  in 
1834,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd  in  1835,  which  called 
forth  from  Wordsworth  his  exquisite  and  pathetic 
poem  on  the  Passing  of  the  Elder  Bards.  In  every 
way  then  it  was  a  world  reborn  that  the  babe  was 
ushered  into  that  26th  of  March,  1833,  a  world 
that  had  turned  its  back  upon  the  past  and  with 
high-beating  heart  was  starting  upon  paths  hith- 
erto untrod.  The  atmosphere  was  tense  and  sur- 
charged with  electricity.  In  such  an  atmosphere 
were  spent  the  first  nine  years  of  the  child's  life, 
nor  can  we  suppose  his  high-strung  nature  to  have 
been  unthrilled  by  the  great  expectancy  of  the 
era,  in  politics  and  science,  by  the  quickening 
breath  of  regeneration  that  was  inspiring  and  en- 
ergizing all  classes  of  men,  nor  again  to  have  been 
unmoved  by  the  power,  the  beauty,  and  the  majesty 
that  dwelt  in  lake  and  in  wood,  in  mountain  and 
in  valley,  in  river  and  in  glen  of  that  land  of 
loveliness.  However,  the  land  of  promise  beck- 
oned across  the  seas,  and  in  1842  the  boy  accom- 
panied his  parents  to  America,  where,  in  1843, 
they  found  a  home  amid  the  forests  of  Indiana, 
forty  miles  from  ]\Iadison,  where  was  the  nearest 
school.    Here  for  six  years  he  led  a  home  life  such 

89 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

as  the  reader  may  perhaps  imagine,  if  the  swift 
development  of  the  West  has  not  already  thrust 
such  primitive  conditions  unimaginably  far  away. 
Such  a  life  would  seem  to  involve  a  stagnation, 
if  not  a  paralysis,  of  the  mental  powers,  the  child 
being  cut  off  from  nearly  all  intercourse  with  his 
fellows  and  apparently  left  without  any  stimulus 
to  the  higher  life  of  the  soul.  So  indeed  it  would 
for  the  majority.  They  would  make  bitter 
plaint  of  the  environment  as  having  repressed  all 
their  nobler  aspirations  and  fastened  them  in- 
separably to  the  soil;  and  some  poet  would  cele- 
brate them  as  gems  of  purest  ray  serene  but  hid 
in  the  depths  of  ocean,  as  radiant  flowers  but  bom 
to  blush  unseen — and  some  sociologist  would  echo 
the  poet  and  predict  that  with  only  the  opportu- 
nity of  education  and  association  with  the  cul- 
tured, "genius"  might  be  "generated"  in  every 
hundredth  man  and  talents  brought  forth  as  plen- 
tiful as  blackberries.  It  would  indeed  be  over- 
daring  to  affirm  with  Galton  that  genius  is  irre- 
pressible; we  may  admit  that  circumstances  may 
sometimes  and  even  often  be  fatally  unfriendly. 
Yet  the  conquering  quality  in  real  ability  is  one 
of  its  most  notable  marks  and  showed  itself  clearly 
in  the  case  of  young  Patterson.  Immersed  in  the 
forest-depths  he  did  not  go  untaught  nor  uned- 
ucated.   Well  might  he  exclaim: 

"I  care  not,  Fortune,  what  thou  may  deny. 
You  cannot  rob  me  of  free  Nature's  grace." 

It  was  by  virtue  of  Nature's  grace  so  freely  be- 
stowed on  him,  by  virtue  of  the  stalwart  ancestral 
blood  that  flowed  in  bin  delicate  veins,  that  he 

90 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

learned,  forty  miles  away  from  .sdiool,  by  the  dim 
candles  and  the  tireside  glow  of  his  pioneer  homo, 
far  more  and  far  better  things  than  are  often 
taught  in  the  palatial  temples  of  education  that 
adorn  our  jnodern  cities.  He  had  not  indeed  the 
endles.'^  series  of  Eeaders,  Arithmetics,  and  Geog- 
raphies that  now  enrich  the  great  publishing 
houses  of  America :  he  was  never  pampered  on 
the  thin  spiritual  gruei,  the  delicately  flavored  in- 
tellectual pap,  on  which  the  favored  children  of 
to-day  are  fed.  He  learned  nothing  about  the 
Child's  History  of  Greece  and  I?ome  and  Modern 
Kiirope;  he  made  no  Little  Journeys  and  saw  no 
T'ittle  Rivers  and  read  no  Jungle  Books  nor  other 
l)ooks  for  Little  People;  in  fact,  he  remained  ig- 
norant of  all  recent  devices  to  prolong  the  natural 
period  of  mental  babyhood.  But  he  did  grow 
strong  on  the  strong  meat  of  the  classic  writers, 
he  was  happy  in  the  companionship  of  Scott  and 
Burns  and  other  illustrious  countrymen,  he  learned 
to  know  the  voices  of  Milton  and  Shakespeare  and 
the  great  choir  of  England,  he  drank  from  the 
clear-flowing  fountains  of  Hume  and  Macaulay, 
of  Robertson  and  of  Gibbon.  How  well  such  old- 
fashioned  and  obsolete  training  served  its  purpose 
may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  after  only  two 
years'  attendance  at  school  in  Madison,  in  1849 
and  1850.  the  boy  of  17  was  himself  foimd  fitted 
tn  assu)ne  charge  of  a  country  school,  which  he 
successfully  conducted  till  the  next  year,  when  he 
entered  Hanover  College.  There  he  maintained 
himself  at  the  head  of  his  class  till  his  graduation 
in  185G.  at  the  age  of  23,  thus  preparing  for  the 
refutation   of   another   favorite   fallacy,   that   the 

91 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

leaders  in  school  are  seldom  or  never  heard  of 
afterwards.  It  is  true  that  the  dark  side  of  in- 
distinction  does  indeed  swallow  up  large  numbers 
of  first-honor  men;  but  it  is  also  true  that  it 
swallows  up  countless  throngs  of  all  other  classes. 
The  honor  man's  chance  for  distinction  is  not 
indeed  good;  but  it  is  far  better  than  the  chance 
of  any  single  one  of  his  fellows.  It  is  true  that 
most  of  the  eminent  successes  in  life  are  scored, 
not  by  the  honor  men,  but  by  others;  but  it  is 
also  true  that  most  of  the  grass  is  eaten,  not  by 
the  black  sheep,  but  by  the  white,  aud  for  similar 
reasons. 

The  old  college  curriculum  was  srict,  formal, 
and  straight-laced  as  a  Puritan.  It  lacked  the  in- 
finite elasticity  and  flexibility  of  the  modern  elec- 
tive S3'^stem,  with  which  indeed  it  compared  much 
as  Calvinism  with  Universalism,  But,  as  every- 
thing has  the  defects  of  its  qualities,  so  too  it 
has  the  qualities  of  its  defects,  and  it  is  ques- 
tionable whether  the  working  of  the  old  system, 
as  reckoned  in  men,  the  only  final  units  of  value, 
was  on  the  whole  inferior  to  that  of  the  new.  This 
latter  yields  us  specialists  actually,  while  the 
former  yielded  them  only  potentially;  but  that 
there  is  great  gain  in  such  early  specialization  is 
not  by  any  means  sure.  We  have  seen  that  young 
Patterson  readily  overcame  the  handicap  of  cir- 
cumstances, which  at  the  most  delayed  his  en- 
trance into  life  by  three  years.  When  he  did  come 
he  came  fit,  not  merely  to  do  some  one  thing  ex- 
ceding  well — like  the  mere  fractions  of  humanity 
that  now  swarm  every  June  from  the  hives  of 
specialization,  but  to  do  many  things  well,  and 
92 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

that  particular  thing  exceeding  well  to  which  na- 
tive bent  or  the  constraint  of  environment  might 
incline  him. 

Though  not  yet  24,  he  was  chosen  Principal  of 
G-eenville  Presbyterial  Academy,  in  Muhlenberg 
County.  Ky.,  at  any  time  a  recognition,  not  merely 
of  scholastic  accomplishment,  but  also  of  adminis- 
trative ability,  and  under  the  circumstances  of  the 
c?.ee  particularly  noteworthy.  The  duties  of  this 
position,  often  trying  enough,  he  discharged  effi- 
ciently for  three  years,  until  elected  Principal  of 
the  Preparatory  Department  of  StcAvart  College, 
since  then  devclopt  into  Southwestern  University, 
Clarksville,  Tennessee,  where  he  was  speedily  ad- 
vanced to  the  chair  of  Latin  and  Greek.  Here  he 
remained  but  two  years,  1859-61,  being  then 
called  back  to  Kentucky  to  the  position  of  Prin- 
cipal of  the  Transylvania  High  School,  at  Lex- 
ington. This  post  he  lilled  with  energy  and  suc- 
cess till.  1865,  when  he  was  called  to  the  chair  of 
Ijatin  and  Civil  History  in  the  newly  organized 
Kentucky  University. 

The  nine  years  that  had  passed  since  young 
Patterson's  graduation  had  been  years  strenuous 
enough  to  suit  the  most  fastidious;  they  had  been 
occupied  with  multitudinous  cares  of  administra- 
tion as  well  as  of  teaching.  When  you  meet  the 
bright  college  graduate  that  for  a  decade  has  de- 
voted himself  to  "school  work,'-*  to  the  incessant 
routine  of  reports,  recitations,  and  general  man- 
agement, it  is  almost  certain  that  you  will  note 
with  pain  a  distinct  declension  from  the  ideals, 
the  aspirations,  and  even  the  knowledge  of  ten 
years  before.     He  knows  certainly  much  more  of 

93 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

the  world,  but  he  knows  and  thinks  less  of  the 
spirit.  He  will  confess  that  he  is  "rusty"  in  the 
languages  and  mathematics  and  perhaps  even  in 
the  science?-,  his  vision  of  the  great .  presiding 
geniuses  of  history  has  grown  dim,  and  his  glance 
his  been  turned  away.  He  excuses  himself  on  the 
ju.4  ground  that  his  time  is  taken  up  with  his 
Board  and  his  Teachers  and  his  Committees.  He 
has  become  but  a  small  wheel  or  rather  an  uncon- 
scious cog  in  the  huge  and  complicated  machine 
of  education.  No  one  need  wonder  when  such  a 
fate  overtakes  a  "Principal."  But  it  did  not  over- 
take young  Patterson.  His  personality  proved 
strong  and  triumphant.  In  spite  of  the  distrac- 
tions and  consuming  cares  of  his  responsible  posi- 
tions, he  never  lost  touch  with  science  and  learn- 
ing, with  research  and  scholarship.  He  still 
found  time  not  merely  for  loving  companionship 
with  the  masters  of  literature,  both  ancient  and 
modern,  but  for  minute  and  extended  philological 
studies  not  unworthy  of  a  linguistic  specialist. 
So  capacious  was  his  intellect,  so  diversified  his 
interests,  so  enlightened  and  catliolic  his  sympa- 
thies that  it  is  not  easy  to  say  what  was  his  favor- 
ite, what  would  have  been  his  specialty,  had  for- 
tune commanded  or  permitted  him  to  specialize. 
To  me,  however,  he  seemed  by  nature  rather  a 
comparative  philologist  than  aught  else.  He  had 
acquired  an  easy  familiarity  with  Hebrew,  while 
Principal  of  the  Transylvania  High  School,  and 
he  enjoys  the  distinction  of  being  the  first  west 
of  the  Alleghanies  to  attempt  to  become  a  San- 
skrit scholar.  No  one  that  ever  enjoyed  the 
blessing    Of   his    instruction   can   forget    the    de- 

94 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

light  he  appeared  to  find  in  Grimm's  mys- 
terious Procession  of  the  Mutes,  as  awe-inspir- 
ing as  the  Precession  of  the  Equinoxes,  nor 
the  keener  than  bloodhound  scent  with  which 
he  would  track  down  some  vagrant  word  from 
Kome  to  Athens  and  to  India,  from  the  braes  of 
Scotland  or  bogs  of  Ireland,  through  the  fens  and 
forests  of  Germany  and  tlie  frozen  wastes  of 
"Russia,  to  its  home  on  the  central  plateau  of  Asia. 
Those  were  rare  chases  we  made  in  those  golden 
days,instructive  and  enjoyable  in  the  highest  de- 
gree, with  the  master-huntsman  hounding  and 
cheering  us  on.  A  red  fox  chase  sometimes,  much 
fun  and  little  fur,  but  none  the  less  profitable, 
even  when  the  trail  proved  false,  for  in  earlier 
days,  as  in  later,  the  philologists  knew  some  things 
that  were  not  cO.  But  the  most  bootless  investi- 
gation could  not  fail  to  be  inspiring,  and  the  spir- 
itual gain  was  never  wanting.  Of  all  the  facts  of 
human  history  the  fact  of  Language  is  the  most 
towering  and  conspicuous.  Its  origin  and  growtli 
are  beyond  compare  wonderful  and  significant,  the 
laws  of  its  structure  and  development  are  not  less 
profound  and  subtile  than  the  laws  of  planetary 
\vheelings  and  stellar  evolution.  The  attitude  of 
awe  and  reverence  l>efore  the  Word  is  a  college 
acquisition  not  to  be  lightly  esteemed.  The  recog- 
nition that  a  certain  fleeting  or  instantaneous 
posture  of  the  vocal  organs,  the  shape  of  a  certain 
momentary  pulse  of  air,  has  descended  unchanged 
■or  changed  in  a  prescribed  and  definite  fashion 
through  thousands  of  years,  that  it  marks  one's 
blood  kinship  with  one's  clan,  from  India  to  Cali- 
fornia, is    amazing    and    awesome;  it   sobers  the 

95 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

spirit  and  gives  ballast  to  the  soul.     More  partic- 
ularly, the  habit,  of  hunting  up  the  affinities  of 
words  is  invaluable  to  the  effective  wielder  of  hu- 
man speech.    Especially  is  this  true  of  the  wielder 
of  English,  in  Avhich  vocables  tend  to  become  pure 
arbitrary  symbols,  as  in  Volapuk  or  the  logistic 
of  Peano,  whereas  in  German  one  still  feels  the 
meaning  of  one's  words.     By  the  student  trained 
in  Prof.  Patterson's  class-room  the  Word  was  not 
merely  perceived  in  itself  and  in  its  conventional 
meaning,  it  was  apperceived  in  its  history  and 
kinship ;  it  was  seen,  not  in  its  bare  and  bald  sig- 
nificance, but  wearing  a  bright  aureole  of  sugges- 
tions and  "full-charged  with  old-world  wonders." 
In  the  days  of  his  Principalship  Prof.  Patter- 
son had  become  a  wide-ranging  linguist,  and  the 
Curators  made  no  mistake  in  calling  him  to  the 
chair  of  Latin.     It  is  only  one  feature  of  his  oc- 
cupancy that  has  thus  far  been  noted.     Another 
was  the  stress  that  he  laid  upon  Latin  composition. 
Such  an  advanced  and  difficult  work  as  Crombie's 
Gmynasium  was  carefully  studied  by  his  seniors, 
who  were  also  drilled  in  turning  Hume  and  Ma- 
eaulay  into  Latin.     In  reading  Latin  they  found 
one  of  his  favorites  in  Lucretius,  whom  they  read 
partly  in  class,  partly  as  a  parallel,  the  stately 
argumentation  of  the  chief  of  Latin  poets  being 
an  especially  delicate  morsel    to    the    logic-loving 
Scotchman. 

As  the  very  able  adjutancy  of  Prof.  Milligan 
relieved  Prof.  Patterson  of  the  bulk  of  the  Latin 
teaching,  he  found  time  for  interesting  courses  in 
Metaphysics.  It  was  in  this  department  that  he 
perhaps  im^pressed  himself  most  deeply  upon  the 

96 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

minds  of  some  students.  The  subject  is  difficult 
and  repellent  to  the  majority,  but  Prof.  Patterson 
never  failed  to  maintain  the  interest  of  his  classes. 
As  a  genuine  son  of  the  heath,  he  was  thoroughly 
loyal  to  the  great  Sir  William  Hamilton,  but  he 
never  called  for  any  narrow  acquiescence  in  his 
master's  dogmatism.  His  own  library  was  rich  in 
philosophic  works,  both  of  the  Scotch  school  and 
of  others,  which  he  delighted  to  incite  his  students 
to  consult  and  which  he  was  generous  in  putting 
at  their  service.  In  fact,  it  would  seem  that  Prof. 
Pattei-son  was  almost  as  useful  to  his  students  in 
the  direction  of  their  reading  as  in  his  class-room 
instruction.  P'or  his  own  reading  had  taken  the 
widest  range,  and  he  had  a  fine  instinct  for  the 
best  in  literature  as  well  as  in  science  and  history. 
Many  were  the  books  bought  at  his  suggestion, 
sometimes  numbers  of  copies  of  the  same  work  by 
one  ela.ss.  The  latest  and  most  noteworthy  pro- 
ducts of  the  British  press  rarely  escaped  his  atten- 
tion—his judgment  was  sure  and  his  taste  dis- 
criminating. It  was  the  day  of  the  new  birth  of 
Zoology  and  Botany,  or  of  their  rebaptism  under 
the  auguster  name  of  Biology.  In  1859  Charles 
Robert  Darwin  had  spoken  his  memorable  oracle 
on  "The  Origin  of  Species  by  Natural  Selection," 
and  the  whole  air  shook  with  its  multiplied  echoes 
and  re-echoes.  Prof.  Patterson  had  not  been 
swept  of!  his  feet  by  the  great  wave  of  argument 
and  authority,  but  he  was  an  eager  student  of  the 
subject  and  a  diligent  reader  of  Darwin  and  Spen- 
cer, of  Huxley  and  Tyndall,  of  Murphy  and  of 
Mivart.  Hardly  less  was  he  interested  in  the  doc- 
trine of  the  cell,  as  it  grew  up  under  the  master- 

97 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

hand  of  Virchow,  and  even  in  the  abiogenetic  the- 
ories of  Bastian.  It  was  indeed  a  surprising  sight 
to  see  a  Professor  of  Latin  so  deeply  versed  in  the 
sciences  both  of  matter  and  of  mind,  so  closely  in 
touch  with  the  great  scientific  and  philosophic 
movements  of  the  day,  and  so  fully  au  courant 
with  the  most  recent  developments  in  so  many 
fields  of  research  and  discussion  so  diverse  and  so 
widely  sundered.  He  himself  found  a  lively  pleas- 
ure in  placing  the  rich  treasures  of  his  varied 
knowledge  at  the  service  of  his  pupils,  to  whom 
his  stimulation  no  less  than  his  guidance  was  in- 
valuable. 

Even  this  was  not  all,  however.  Prof.  Patter- 
son was  almost  equally  helpful  in  Civil  History. 
This,  too,  was  a  favorite  study.  He  loved  to  dis- 
course on  the  great  national  or  racial  movements, 
the  migrations  of  the  peoples,  the  formation,  dis- 
solution, and  regeneration  of  governments  and  em- 
pires, just  as  his  noble  colleague,  the  leonine  John 
Henry  Neville,  loved  to  dwell  on  the  supreme 
tragical  moments  of  history,  its  sublime  dramatic 
situations,  its  pivotal  crises  and  catastrophic  de- 
nouments.  Tn  fact,  these  two  potent  teachers 
98 


*An  amusing  illustration  of  the  native  tendency  of 
President  Patterson  to  throw  his  arms  round  the  earth 
is  found  in  the  following :  A  student,  who  has  since 
made  a  name  for  himself  as  a  lawyer,  for  some  reason 
absented  himself  from  an  examination  in  history;  after- 
wards he  sought  and  received  special  examination,  at 
which  the  first  question,  set  in  Civil  History,  read  thus : 
"Give  a  brief  account  of  the  events  preceding,  succeed- 
ing and  contemporaneous  with  the  reign  of  Alfred  the 
■Treat."  Inasmuch  as  a  liberal  construction  of  this  ques- 
tion would  extend  its  range  over  the  whole  of  time  and 
space,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  examinee  was  rather 
appalled  at  the  requisition. 

98 


Pkes.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

were  in  tlieir  methods,  their  ideals,  their  services, 
their  scholarship,  and  even  in  their  natures  remark- 
ably complementary.  If  intensive  was  the  dis- 
tinctive epithet  for  the  latter,  extensive*  was  fully 
as  applicable  to  the  former,  though  neither  was 
narrov-  and  neither  superficial.  In  their  long  as- 
sociation in  collegiate  work  each  seemed  to  round 
out  the  other,  and  no  student  could  be  other  than 
fortunate  who  fell  under  heir  concurrent  influence, 
even  tho  he  never  felt  any  other. 

Such  was  Prof.  Patterson,  the  teacher — a 
broad-diffused  glow  of  intelligence,  linguistic,  phil- 
osophic, scientific  and  historical,  clear,  distinct, 
colorless,  bright,  illuminative—  not  like  his  great 
compeer,  the  fierce  ardor  of  a  seven-times  heated 
furnace.  Over  the  wide  seas  of  knowledge  we  glided 
as  in  a  pleasure-yacht,  with  sails  obedient  to  the 
urgence  of  every  breeze,  touching  at  every  inviting 
port  and  exploring  at  leisure  every  curious  coast ; 
whereas  with  the  Greek  professor  we  sped  along 
as  on  some  swift-keeled  Mauretania  throbbing  with 
propulsive  energy,  furrowing  a  predestined  path, 
and  aimed  at  an  appointed  haven. 

The  most  solemn  of  all  oatlis  of  the  ancient 
Pythagoreans  was  couched  in  these  mysterious 
words:  "Yea,  by  him  that  vouchsafed  our  soul 
Quaternion,  a  fountain  having  roots  of  everflowing 
nature." 

yat  fia  tov  afurepa  \l/v\a  TrapaSovra  TerpaKTvv,  Trayav 
acvaou  <^vo'£(os  pt^wfJiaT ,  l^ovcrav 

The  inspiration  of  Professor  Patterson  was 
sp^-ead  over  nearly  the  whole  circle  of  knowledg(?, 
but  his  teaching  proper  reached  only  the  four  sub- 
jects of  Linguistics,  Literature,  Metaphysics,  and 

99 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

Civil  History,  a  Pythagorean  quaternion,  and  for 
all  that  yielded  to  the  spell  of  his  instruction,  a 
fountain  with  roots  of  nature  everlasting. 

Bu  it  was  not  in  teaching  that  Prof.  Patter- 
son was  destined  to  celebrate  his  highest  triumph 
and  attain  his  widest  renown.  The  union  in  1865 
of  Kentucky  University  with  the  State  College 
established  in  conformity  with  the  Morrill  Act  of 
1862,  one  of  the  farthest-sighted  pieces  of  legis- 
lation that  have  ever  proceeded  from  Washington, 
had  formed  at  Lexington  an  educational  institu- 
tion of  remarkable  promise.  The  flood  tide  of 
its  instant  prosperity  was  reached  in  1870,  and  for 
awliile  it  seemed  as  if  Jjexington  were  destined  to 
bcome  a  great  centre  of  education  and  learning, 
rivaling  in  a  measure  the  older,  more  favored  and 
famous  foundations  of  the  North  and  East.  The 
man  who  had  brought  about  this  union  was  John 
B.  Bowman,  founder  and  for  many  years  Regent 
of  Kentucky  University,  and  particularly  able  as 
an  organizer  and  promoter.  His  plans  for  the 
institution  that  had  been  his  life-work  were  large 
and  generous,  and  they  were  expanded  and  lib- 
eralized as  it  rose  rapidly  into  national  recognition 
find  importance.  But  the  widening  horizon  of  his 
hopes  soon  passed  beyond  the  denominational  bor- 
dprs  of  his  earlier  schemes,  and  he  found  that  con- 
tinued progress  would  call  for  the  desectarianiza- 
tion  of  the  University.  On  the  other  hand,  many 
of  the  most  zealous  and  influential  elements  that 
formed  the  natural  clientele  of  the  University  were 
distinctly,  conscientiously,  and  unalterably  op- 
posd  to  any  such  universalization.  They  held  with 
a  certain  historic  justice  that  the  seminary  was 

100 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

originally  conceived  and  founded  as  a  Propaganda, 
with  the  express  purpose  of  educating  the  youth  of 
their  own  church  along  the  lines  of  their  own 
faith,  that  it  was,  in  fact,  intended  to  be  a  strictly 
denominational  college,  that  as  such  it  had  solic- 
ited and  accepted  gifts,  and  that  the  secularization 
in  progress  or  contemplated  involved  a  perversion 
and  a  misappropriation.  Here  then  was  a  contra- 
diction such  as  emerges  regularly,  in  the  course  of 
development,  between  Progressives  and  Conserva- 
tives, between  those  that  go  on  and  those  that  stay 
rooted  where  ihey  are.  By  far  the  most  illustrious 
example  in  American  history,  and  one  of  the  most 
illustrious  in  the  history  of  the  world,  was  offered 
in  our  late  Civil  War,  which  resulted  from  the  an- 
tagonism necessarily  disclosed  as  the  mind  of  the 
North  moved  irresistibly  away  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  Constitution  and  of  178S,  while  the  mind 
of  the  South  abode  steadfastly  thereby.  In  the 
case  of  Kentucky  University,  the  struggle  was  long 
and  bitter,  and  a  ]X)rtrayal  of  its  features  would 
not  be  edifying.  Let  it  suffice  that  victory  re- 
mained with  the  strict  constructionists.  The 
broad-gauge  plans  of  Mr.  Bowman  miscarried,  and 
he  himself  finally  yielded  up  his  position  as  Re- 
gent. Therewith  the  future  of  the  Kentucky  Uni- 
versity was  determined. 

Already  in  18G9  Prof.  Patterson  had  been 
called  to  the  office  of  President  of  the  Agricultural 
and  Mechanical  College,  as  a  Department  of  Ken- 
tucky University,  an  office  which  he  administered 
ably  till  the  year  1878.  Then  it  was  that  the  irre- 
pressible conflict  already  mentioned  at  last  issued 
in  legislation  severing   all   relations   between   the 

101 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

College  and  the  University.  Hereby  the  former 
was  indeed  freed  from  an  entangling  alliance  that 
for  several  years  had  given  little  to  hope  and  much 
to  fear,  but  it  was  cast  forth  a  homeless  and  al- 
most a  helpless  waif.  At  once  President  Patter- 
son set  about  to  secure  its  retention  in  Lexington. 
In  all  such  cases  it  is  necessary  to  offer  "induce- 
ments"; the  fact  that  licxington  was  incompar- 
ably the  bcfet  place  for  the  College  would  of  itself 
count  for  little;  the  scale  had  to  be  weighted  down 
in  its  favor  with  more  material  considerations. 
The  City  Council  was  persuaded  to  give  the  City 
Park  as  a  new  site  for  the  College,  and  President 
Patterson  secured  from  the  City  Council  of  Lex- 
ington and  the  Fiscal  Court  of  Fayette  County 
the  additional  gift  of  $54,000  for  the  erection  of 
buildings.  In  consideration  of  these  favors  the 
College  was  allowed  to  stay  in  Lexington,  but  its 
plight  was  really  pitiable.  By  the  Morrill  Act  of 
1862  there  had  fallen  to  Kentucky  as  endowment 
of  the  Agricultural  and  Mechanical  College  a 
princely  domain  of  330,000  acres  of  public  lands. 
Properly  located  and  judiciously  managed,  this 
would  have  yielded  a  sura  adequate,  if  not  to  the 
development,  at  least  to  the  support  of  its  bene- 
ficiary. However,  it  was  sold  at  the  rate  of  50 
cents  per  acre,  for  the  sum  of  $165,000,  which 
gave  a  net  return  of  $9,900  interest  per  annum ! 
Now  began  the  battle  for  life,  destined  to  drag 
its  weary  length  through  nearly  a  whole  genera- 
tion. It  was  in  this  long  warfare  that  the  varied 
powers  o  f  President  Patterson  were  called  into 
fullest  requisition,,  that  he  won  for  himself  the 
highest  distinction,  and  that  he  rendered  to  the 

102 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

State  of  Kentucky,  to  the  cause  of  education,  and 
to  the  interests  of  civilization  the  most  enduring 
and  the  most  conspicuous  service.  Of  course  it 
was  kno\^Ti  of  aii  men  that  the  income  of  $9,900 
was  a  mere  mockery,  and  President  I'atterson 
addressed  himself  to  the  arduous  task  of  securing 
a  legislative  appropriation;  arduous,  because  there 
was  no  lively  sentiment  in  favor  of  higher  educa- 
tion by  the  State,  but  much  earnest  and  active 
sentiment  against  it,  as  the  sequel  distinctly  re- 
vealed. At  the  next  session  of  the  General  As- 
sembly, in  1880,  he  secured  an  appropriation  by 
tax  of  one  half-cent  on  every  one  hundred  dollars 
of  taxable  valuation;  in  other  words,  a  one-twen- 
tieth of  a  mill  tax — very  inconsiderable  as  we  now 
reckon  such  taxes.  Hereby  the  income  of  the 
State  College  (as  it  wa^  henceforth  called)  Wiis 
increased  by  $17,500  (the  assessed  valuation  being 
about  three  hundred  and  fifty  millions),  and 
reached  the  munificent  total  of  $27,400.  Herewith 
the  College  entered  upon  its  stormy  career,  having 
a  faculty  of  only  six,  with  86  per  cent  of  it^  few 
matriculates  unable  to  do  any  college  work  and 
enrolled  in  the  sub-freshman  class.  Surely  such 
a  beginning  seemed  in  no  way  alarming,  in  mod- 
esty it  was  a  perfect  model.  But  it  involved  the 
most  dangerous  and  deadly  precedent  of  state  aid 
to  higher  education,  and  there  was  no  telling  what 
terrible  consequences  such  a  precedent  might  pro- 
voke or  protect.  The  one-twentieth  might  grow 
to  one-tenth,  one-eighth,  or  one-seventh,  or  even 
more,  with  nobody  nigh  to  hinder.  As  the  College 
sprinkled  its  Alumni  thicker  and  thicker  over  the 
State,  some  would  get  into  the  Legislature,  into 

103 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

the  public  offices,  on  the  bench — the  youthful  in- 
truder would  gradually  grow  irresistibly  strong, 
it  would  shoot  up  higher  and  higher,  it  would 
overtower  and  overshadow  all  the  denominational 
schools  in  the  State,  and  ultimately  dwarf  them 
into  insignificance.  All  these  sequels  were  clearly 
foreseen  by  the  keen-eyed  leaders  of  the  denomi- 
nations, who  determined  that  the  young  Hercules 
should  be  strangled  in  his  cradle.  Obsta  prin- 
cipiis!  was  their  motto.  Accordingly  six  colleges 
joined  forces  in  a  holy  league,  and  in  1883,  at  the 
next  session  of  the  General  Assembly,  they  made 
a  concerted  attack  upon  the  State  College  by  call- 
inp-  for  the  repeal  of  the  tax  and  the  confinement 
of  the  operations  of  the  College  within  the  limits 
of  its  original  income  of  $9,900 — a  course  which 
would  have  been  equivalent  to  the  dissolution  of  the 
College  itself.  This  attack  was  directed  against  the 
public  policy  of  state  aid  to  higher  education.  It 
was  contended  that  such  aid  is  unwise,  that  such 
higher  instiniction  should  be  left  to  the  church  and 
to  private  beneficence,  that  the  many  should  not 
be  taxed  to  educate  the  few !  As  if  the  activities 
of  the  few,  the  learned,  the  men  of  science,  were 
for  themselves  alone  and  not  in  far  larger  meas- 
ure for  their  fellows.  As  if  surgical  and  medical 
science  benefited  only  surgeons  and  physicians ! 
Are  ship-builders  and  bridge-builders  the  only 
ones  to  profit  by  fast  ships  and  good  bridges  ?  Does 
the  light  illuminate  only  the  hand  that  bears  it? 
Such  a  fallacy  seems  too  patent  for  exposure,  yet 
it  is  very  tough  and  hard  to  kill.  Only  a  few  years 
ago  a  very  able  and  distinguisht  educator  argued 
strenuously  in  favor  of  a  certain  benefaction's  tak- 
ing the  form  of  lower  rather  than  higher  education, 
104 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Pattersom 

on  the  grouutl  that  it  should  benefit  the  people  at 
large !  Such  pleadings  were  powerfully  presented 
before  the  Legislature  in  1882,  and  for  three 
months  th  fate  of  the  College  wavered  in  the  bal- 
ance. Better  counsels  prevailed,  however,  and  in 
the  end  the  bill  repealing  the  tax  was  rejected. 
"Hereby  it  seemed  that  the  future  of  the  College 
VMS  in  some  measure  a-s^sured.  The  victory  was 
a  most  significant  one,  since  defeat  meant  anni- 
hilation, and  was  won  against  such  odds  as  made 
the  friends  of  the  College  well-nigh  despair. 
There  is  no  surer  measure  of  hope  than  financial 
credit.  "Private  credit  is  wealth;  public  honor  is 
security,"  wrote  Junius.  The  fluctuations  of  the 
Bourse  tell  w^ith  unerring  precision  how  confidence 
in  the  Kepublic  or  the  Empire  is  rising  or  falling 
in  the  minds  of  the  best-informed.  Judged  in  this 
way,  the  public  confidence  in  the  future  of  the 
State  College  seems  at  this  time  to  have  reached  an 
absolute  zero.  For,  as  already  noted,  the  City  of 
T>exington  had  given  the  site  for  the  College,  and 
along  with  Fayette  County  had  added  $54,000  for 
the  erection  of  buildings,  which  were  already  aris- 
ing when  the  legislative  battle  began.  Through 
some  error  in  the  estimate  of  the  architect,  the 
College  building  and  a  dormiory  had  been  started 
on  a  plan  to  which  the  funds  in  sight  were  entirely 
inadequate,  so  that  it  became  necessary  either  to 
abandon  the  construction  or  to  borrow  the  money 
requisite  for  the  completion.  The  attempt  was 
made  to  effect  a  loan,  but  this  was  found  to  be 
imnossible.  One  bank  after  another  declined  to 
furnish  the  funds,  for  the  very  excellent  reason 
that  the  College  could  offer  no  security.  It  was 
generallv  believed  that  the  state  tax  would  be  re- 

105 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

scinded.  that  the  College  would  then  be  suspended, 
that  the  grounds  given  by  the  city  would  thereupon 
revert  to  the  city,  that  repayment  of  any  money 
advanced  would  be  out  of  the  question.  Such 
credit  as  the  College  had  enjoyed  for  two  years 
had  now  vanished  completely.  At  this  crisis  in  the 
aflfairs  of  the  institution  committed  to  his  trust, 
President  Paterson  came  forward  like  a  veritable 
Deus  ex  machina.  The  lad  brought  up  amid  the 
oaks  and  walnuts  of  Indiana,  who  taught  a  coun- 
try school  at  seventeen,  had  not  inherited  a  for- 
tune; nor  does  the  path  of  even  the  Principal, 
much  less  the  Professor,  often  lead  along  the  banks 
of  the  Pactolus.  Nevertheless,  the  Scotch  thrift 
that  has  always  been  no  mean  factor  in  national 
prosperity  and  national  greatness,  had  not  been 
wanting  in  this  typical  Scot.  Heroically  over- 
mastering adverse  conditions,  he  had  wrested  a 
competency  from  grudging  fortune,  and  now  there 
fell  to  him  such  an  opportunity  for  grand  action 
as  might  gladden  the  heart  of  a  knight.  He 
offered  his  whole  estate  as  security  for  the  College. 
This  security  was  accepted  by  the  Northern  Bank, 
the  money  was  advanced  for  the  completion  of  the 
buildings,  which  went  on  uninterrupted  in  their 
construction.  Here  was  an  act  of  faith  and  of 
m8,gnanimity  that  deserves  to  take  rank  in  very 
high  and  select  company.  When  we  reflect  that 
President  Patterson  was  risking  his  all  for  a  for- 
lorn hope,  and  that  the  confidently  expected  ad- 
verse vote  in  the  General  Assembly  would  have 
left  him  penniless  and  unemployed  at  the  age  of 
49  years,  it  seems  hard  to  overrate  the  moral  cour- 
age and  nobility  of  his  deed  and  hard  to  find  for 

106 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

it    any    parallel  in  the  history    of    education    in 
America. 

The  relief  from  this  financial  embarrassment 
and  the  failure  of  the  attempt  to  repeal  the  one- 
tA^'entieth-mill  tax  might  justly  revive  the  droop- 
ing spirits  of  the  State  College  authorities,  but  a 
severer  and  even  more  desperate  battle  was  yet 
to  be  fought.  While  the  legislative  struggle  was 
in  progress,  the  enemies  of  the  College  made  the 
startling  discovery  that  the  tax  was  unconstitu- 
tional !  The  provision  of  the  Constitution  seemed 
to  them  most  express  and  admira:ble;  for  it  de- 
clares, in  section  one  of  article  eleven,  that  "The 
capital  of  the  fund,  called  and  known  as  the 
'Common  School  Fund,'  consisting  of  $1,235,- 
768.42,  for  which  bonds  have  been  executed  by 
the  State  to  the  Board  of  Education  and  $73,500 
of  stock  in  the  Bank  of  Kentucky;  also  the  sum 
of  $51,223.29,  balance  of  inerest  on  the  school 
fund  of  the  year  1848,  unexpended,  together  with 
any  sum  which  may  be  hereafter  raised  in  the 
State,  by  taxation  or  otherwise,  for  purposes  of 
education,  shall  be  held  inviolate  for  the  purpose 
of  sustaining  a  system  of  common  schools.  The 
interest  and  dividends  of  said  funds,  together  with 
any  sum  which  may  be  produced  for  that  purpose, 
by  taxation  or  otherwise,  may  be  appropriated  in 
aid  of  common  schools,  but  for  no  other  purpose." 
Such  was  the  formidable  constitutional  rock  that 
lay  directly  in  the  course  of  the  luckless  College, 
on  which  it  seemed  doomed  to  suffer  utter  and 
hopeless  shipwreck.  The  hostile  Colleges  em- 
ployed one  of  the  ablest  constitutional  lawyers. 
Judge  William  Lindsay,  ex-Chief  Justice  of  the 
Commonwealth,    who    made    an    elaborate    argu- 

107 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

ment  on  the  subject  before  a  joint  committee 
of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Kepresentatives  of 
the  General  Assembly  of  Kentucky.  The  conten- 
tion of  the  great  jurist  was  that  in  accordance  with 
the  plain  provision  of  the  Constitution  of  1850, 
"No  money  could  be  raised  by  taxation  or  other- 
wise for  purposes  of  education  other  than  in  the 
common  schools."  This  was  preciisely  what  public 
policy  also  demanded,  according  to  the  denomina- 
tionalists !  No  more  effective  device  could  have 
been  imagined  for  relegating  the  Commonwealth 
of  Kentucky,  not  only  to  the  reannost  position  in 
the  procession  of  Eepublics,  but  to  a  station  be- 
hind every  even  half-progressive  community  on 
the  face  of  the  globe.  In  their  mistaken  zeal,  the 
sectarian  colleges  demanded  control,  not  only  of 
all  higher,  but  of  all  secondary  instruction  as  well. 
Over  the  whole  State  of  Kentucky  they  would 
draw  the  curtain  of  the  Dark  Ages.  It  was  a  tre- 
mendous moment  big  with  fate,  not  only  of  the 
College,  but  also  of  the  whole  Commonwealth. 
The  authorities  of  the  unhappy  institution  had 
applied  for  legal  help  to  the  best  lawyers  in  the 
State,  especially  to  the  distinguished  John  G.  Car- 
li?le,  afterwards  so  conspicuous  in  the  Cabinet  of 
Mr.  Cleveland.  But  he,  with  others,  declined  to 
undertake  a  case  that  he  regarded  as  foregone  in 
its  conclusion ;  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  provision 
of  the  Constitution  was  unequivocal,  and  that 
neither  a  lower  nor  a  higher  court  would  uphold 
the  constitutionality  of  the  tax  in  question.  The 
case  appeared  altogether  desperate,  not  even  worth 
defending.  The  College  was  in  the  plight  of  Israel 
as  dscribed  by  the  Psalmist:  "They  looked  upon 
me,  they  shaked  their  heads." 
108 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

Under  these  dishearteniug  conditions,  when 
all  seemed  lost  and  impossible  of  recovery,  there 
was  one  who  had  no  thought  of  surrender,  and 
who,  calm  and  serene  as  Addison's  Angel,  could 
ride  on  the  whirlwind  and  direct  the  storm. 
President  Patterson  was  no  lawyer,  he  had  never 
studied  law.  But  he  was  a  master  of  logic,  an  ac- 
complished linguist,  skilled  in  the  arts  of  inter- 
pretation, a  subtle  critic,  a  plausible  leader,  and  a 
persuasive  rhetorician.  Above  all  he  possessed  a 
highly  disciplined  intelligence  and  a  piercing  in- 
sight that  detected  at  once  the  vulnerable  point 
in  his  opponent's  armor.  He  asked  and  received 
permission  to  answer  Judge  Lindsay's  argument 
in  the  hall  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  Mon- 
day evening,  30th  of  January,  1882.  Seldom  has 
there  been  a  more  extraordinary  encounter,  of  an 
exnert  Jurist  and  a  college  professor,  in  the 
former's  own  field,  and  seldom  has  the  result  been 
more  unexpected  and  decisive.  When  Judge  Lind- 
say closed  his  argument  the  Wednesday  before 
(35th  of  January),  the  universal  opinion  was  that 
the  six  colleges  had  triumphed  finally ;  when  Presi- 
dent Patterson  finished  his  rejoinder,  the  Judgment 
was  reversed,  it  was  felt  that  the  Judge  had  failed, 
that  the  constitutionality  of  the  tax  had  been  suc- 
cessfully vindicated. 

Their  unforeseen  and  surprising  discomfiture 
before  the  General  Assembly  by  no  means  dis- 
mayed the  League  of  Six,  who  now  determined 
to  bring  the  case  into  court  for  final  arbitrament. 
A  certain  Mrs.  W.  W.  Hill,  of  Louisville,  refused 
to  pay  the  tax,  doubtless  merely  with  intent  to 
test  its  constitutionality,  and  the  case  was  brought 
up  in  the  Chancellor's  Court,  whence  of  course  it 

109 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

passed  to  the  Court  of  Appeals.  The  opposing 
colleges  were  represented  by  a  bright  array  of 
legal  talent.  Judge  Lindsay,  Alexander  P.  Hum- 
phrey, Bennett  H.  Young,  and  James  Trabue. 
Where  so  much  was  at  stake  they  would  not  fail 
to  support  their  plea  with  all  the  best  professional 
ability  at  their  command.  Against  so  much  learn- 
ing and  acumen  allied  for  the  destruction  of  the 
State  College,  there  appeared  once  more  its 
doughty  defender.  President  Patterson,  whom 
both  courts  allowed  to  file,  as  a  brief  for  the  Col- 
lege, the  argument  already  used  so  effectively  be- 
fore the  legislative  Joint  committee.  A  long  si- 
lence under  arms  then  followed.  The  law's  delays 
seldom  advance,  they  too  often  hinder  or  even 
hopelessly  thwart  the  progress  of  Justice.  In  this 
case,  however,  the  delay  was  extremely  fortunate 
for  more  than  one  reason.  The  State  College  was 
growing  daily  in  favor,  in  importance,  and  in 
general  recognition.  The  absurdity  of  the  conten- 
tion put  forward  by  the  protestant  colleges  was 
gradually  becoming  clear  to  the  public  conscious- 
ness, and  the  enormity  of  the  injury  that  would 
be  inflicted  on  the  people's  interests  by  striking 
down  the  State's  one  seminary  of  higher  learning 
grew  daily  more  evident.  Public  sentiment,  at  first 
and  for  years  so  thoroughly  in  sympathy  with  the 
six  colleges,  was  veering  steadily  towards  the  State 
College,  and  victory  was  already  in  the  air  when 
in  1890  Judge  Holt  handed  down  his  decision,  the 
end  of  controversy.  Of  course,  it  upheld  the  con- 
stitutionality of  the  tax,  and  was  written  ad- 
mittedly and  even  avowedly  along  the  lines  laid 
down  in  the  convincing  argument  of  President 
Patterson.  Herewith  closed,  as  it  should  close, 
110 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

one  of  the  most  remarkable,  important,  and  in- 
teresting piece*  of  litigation  in  the  history  of  ed- 
uc'ition.  It  was  not  so  protracted  nor  so  varied 
in  its  phases,  nor  so  full  of  legal  dexterities,  nor 
so  rich  in  devices  of  ingenuit)^  as  the  famous 
process  at  law  in  which  Richard  Bentley,  prince 
of  English  philologists,  maintained  himself  for 
a  whole  generation  and  to  the  end  of  his  life,  at 
the  head  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  defi- 
ance of  all  decrees  of  court  and  of  all  the  machinery 
of  justice  that  could  be  brought  to  bear  upon  him 
by  the  whole  church  and  Judiciary  of  England. 
But  while  we  cannot  withhold  tlie  meed  of  admi- 
ration from  the  great  scholar  for  his  unwearying 
persiistence,  his  dogged  determination,  and  his  in- 
exhaustible resourcefulness,  yet  we  can  have  little 
sympathy  with  his  cause,  nor  can  we  feel  very 
lively  interest  in  the  issues  involved.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  cause  championed  by  Patterson  was  a 
most  righteous  one,  the  interests  at  stake  were 
the  very  highest,  being  nothing  less  than  the  cul- 
tural rank,  the  educational  position,  and  the  in- 
tellectual dignity  of  a  mighty  Commonwealth,  and 
the  methods  employed  were  the  most  upright  and 
honorable.  The  great  argument  that  s'aved  the 
State  College  was  indeed  a  model  of  fairness  and 
straight-forwardness.  Everything  in  fact  hinged 
on  the  proper  interpretation  of  the  phrase  "pur- 
poses of  education."  By  a  number  of  independent 
lines  of  reasoning,  all  converging  upon  one  and 
the  same  conclusion,  the  President  proved  beyond 
any  successful  contradiction  that  by  the  term  "ed- 
ucation" was  meant  common-school  education,  and 
this  alone  was  in  the  minds  of  the  framers  of  the 
Constitution  at  that  time  (December,  1849),  and 

111 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

that  any  other  interpretation  led  at  once  to  ridic- 
ulous consequences.  Whence  it  followed  that  col- 
legiate education  as  given  by  the  State  College 
and  as  contemplated  and  fostered  by  the  tax-law 
in  question  fell  within  neither  the  purview  nor 
the  prohibition  of  the  Constitution.  The  whole 
argument  was  in  fact  a  just  application  of  the 
sound  principle  laid  down  by  Grotius  in  comment 
on  I  Cor.  13:7:  Solent  voces  universales  re- 
stringi  ex  materia  suhjacente — general  terms  are 
to  he  restricted  (in  application)  to  the  subject' 
matter  under  discussion.  Judge  Lindsay  and  the 
colleges  held  that  the  general  term  "education" 
was  to  be  taken  in  its  widest  sense,  as  including  all 
grades  of  discipline;  President  Patterson  showed 
that  only  common  school  education  was  at  the 
time  in  question  under  discussion  or  consideration. 
When  one  reads  the  argument  now,  it  seems  so 
obvious  and  unquestionable  that  one  wonders  how 
there  could  ever  have  been  any  doubt  at  all,  which 
however  merely  attests  the  perfection  and  lumi- 
nosity of  the  President's  demonstration.  It  is 
th  paradox  of  excellent  artistry  that  it  should 
seem  easy  and  obvious;  the  perfect  adjustment 
produces  a  certain  effect  of  simplicity,  natural- 
ness, inevitability.  We  lay  down  the  skillfully 
wrought  story  with  the  feeling  that  it  could  not 
have  turned  out  otherwise;  the  student  closes  up 
such  a  work  as  the  Anabasis  with  the  remark  that 
anybody  could  write  like  that.  But  the  fact  is  that 
only  the  very  few  have  been  able  to  do  it,  and  the 
interpretation  that  the  President  made  so  plain 
as  to  appear  self-evident  actually  escaped  the  ob- 
servation of  some  of  the  keenest  legal  minds  in 
the  country.  Such  a  capital  brief  would  have 
112 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

made  a  great  reputation  for  any  one  engaged  in 
active  practice  at  the  bar.  Along  with  a  number 
of  addresses  delivered  by  President  Patterson,  it 
should  be  published  in  a  handsome  volume.  As 
a  spcimen,  not  of  rhetoric,  but  of  logic,  and  be- 
cause of  the  extreme  importance  of  the  matter 
involved,  it  deserves  a  high  and  permanent  place 
in  the  literature  of  Kentucky. 

This  redemption  and  salvation    of    the    State 
College  of   Kentucky,  this  successful   defense  of 
the  principlt,  of  public  support  of  the  higher  edu- 
cation, was  the  paramount  single  service  rendered 
by    President    Patterson    to    the    Commonwealth 
whose  servant  he  was.     It  is  rare  that  any  man 
has  the  offer  of  even  a  momentary  chance  to  be 
thus  grandly  useful  to  a  whole  people.     It  is  the 
mark  of  a  great  man  to  rise  at  once  to  the  bidding 
of  emergency.     "For  a  brief  span,"  says  Pindar, 
'Tiath  opportunity  for  man,  but  of  him  it  is  surely 
known  when  it  comcth  and  he  waiteth  thereon,  a 
servant  but  no  slave."    It  was  the  good  fortune  of 
President  Patterson  that  a  signal  occasion  should 
present  itself  before  him ;  that  he  mastered  it  per- 
fectly was  his  own  signal  merit.     When  we  call 
the  roll  of  the  leading  colleges  and  universities 
of  the  land  and  read  the  list  of  their  presidents 
and  the  record  of  their  achievements,  we  shall  in- 
deed find  it  a  bright  scroll  of  honor,  a  chronicle 
of  worthy  deeds  bearing  witness  to  eminent  abil- 
ities; but  v^^here  shall  we  find  any  single  act  of 
prowess  to  match  this  rescue  of  the  State  College 
of  Kentucky  from  financial  ruin  and  from  legis- 
lative and  judicial  overthrow  and  extinction? 

Meanwhile  the  exertions  of  the  enemy  to  se- 
cure a  repeal  of  the  tax-act  were  continued  with 

113 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

unabated  zeal  and  energy.  At  every  session  of  the 
Legislature  the  attempt  was  renewed,  but  uniform- 
ly without  success.  Not  even  the  final  decision  of 
the  Appellate  Court  in  1800  could  put  a  quietus 
on  this  periodic  recrudescence  of  animosity.  How- 
ever, the  plea  of  unconstitutionality  being  forever 
annulled,  the  plea  of  public  policy  became  daily 
more  ludicrous.  If  State  aid  to  higher  education 
was  a  calamity  in  disguise,  it  could  not  be  denied 
that  the  disguise  was  perfect.  At  length,  in  1891, 
Article  184  of  the  new  Constitution  recognized  and 
affirmed  the  validity  of  the  half  cent  tax  levied  in 
1880  and  organized  public  opposition  died  what 
might  be  called  a  natural  death,  and  the  State  Col- 
lege has  had  since  then  no  open  foes.  Perhaps  no 
other  educational  institution  in  the  United  States 
has  ever  encountered  such  implacable  hostility  or 
has  ever  sustained  such  a  prolonged  and  at  times 
apparently  hopeless  struggle  against  such  superior 
odds.  While  the  College  has  never  been  without 
able,  faithful,  and  devoted  friends,  who  have  ren- 
dered it  timely  and  efficient  aid,  yet  there  is  no 
question  anywhere  but  that  its  champion  in  this 
unique  battle  was  its  President,  James  Kennedy 
Patterson. 

Such  service  as  we  have  been  considering  could 
of  course  not  be  duplicated,  but  there  were  many 
other  good  offices  that  he  discharged,  only  less  con- 
spicuous. Before  tbe  final  triumph  in  the  Appel- 
late Court,  he  had  zealously  urged  the  establish- 
ment of  an  Agricultural  Experiment  Station  in 
connection  with  the  College,  and  had  thrown  his 
influence  in  favor  of  the  Hatch  Act  of  1887,  by 
which  such  stations  were  endowed  with  a  yearly 

114 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

income  of  $15,000,  to  which  by  the  Adams  Act 
was  added  a  further  sum  of  $15,000  per  annum. 
The  year  1890  was  rendered  still  more  notable  iu 
the  history  of  the  State  College  by  the  Morrill 
Act,  to  the  passage  of  which  through  Congress 
President  Patterson  lent  poM-^erful  and  effective 
aid,  which  appropriated  $25,000  per  annum  to 
each  of  the  Agricultural  and  Mechanical  Colleges 
established  on  the  basis  of  the  land  grant  of 
1862.  Hereby  the  veteran  statesman,  Justin 
S.  Morrill,  placed  a  fitting  capstone  to  the 
stately  edifice  erected  by  his  wisdom  nearly 
a  generation  before.  The  conditions  of  the  Act 
called  for  the  admission  of  colored  students  on 
terms  of  equality  with  the  white,  or  else  for  the 
division  of  the  appropriation  in  the  ratio  of  the 
population.  In  Kentucky  there  could  be  no  hesi- 
tancy before  such  an  alternative :  the  State  College 
received  85%  per  cent  of  the  $35,000,  the  remain- 
ing 1414  per  cent  ($3,625)  being  applied  to  the 
support  of  the  Colored  School  at  Frankfort.  By 
the  Act  of  1907  the  appropriation  of  1890  was 
doubled,  upon  precisely  similar  conditions,  so  that 
the  total  income  of  the  College  as  derived  from  the 
United  States  was  raised  to  $53.650 — equivalent 
to  an  endowment  of  over  $1,000,000. 

The  extreme  individualist  might  contend  that 
such  assistance  from  the  far-off  general  govern- 
ment would  tend  to  paralyze  State  action,  by 
teaching  to  rely  upon  the  invisibl  e  powers  at 
Washington.  However  the  facts  in  the  case  do 
not  confirm  such  a  forecast.  A  tonic  may  be  a 
constructive  and  also  an  appetizer.  In  this  in- 
stance the  help  extended  seems  to  have  acted  as 

115 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

a  stimulus.  For  in  1893  President  Patterson  se- 
cured from  the  Legislature  an  enactment  whereby 
not  only  were  tuition  fees  remitted  to  certain  ap- 
pointees from  the  counties  to  the  College,  but  also 
their  traveling  expenses  for  a  single  trip  from 
home  to  the  College  and  back  home  again  were 
provided  them.  To  some  minds  such  a  piece  of 
legislation  may  sound  queer  and  dangerously 
paternal ;  but  the  conditions  in  distant  parts  of  the 
State  seemed  to  Justify  and  even  demand  it,  while 
its  great  influence  in  ingratiating  the  College  with 
crtain  classes  of  the  people  cannot  be  questioned. 
In  1900  the  General  Assembly  was  persuaded  to 
appropriate  $30,000  for  a  gymnasium  and  $30,000 
for  a  home  for  young  women,  and  in  1902  it  added 
$30,000  for  the  latter.  In  recognition  of  the 
President's  offices  in  all  these  matters,  the  last 
mentioned  building  has  been  appropriately  named 
Patterson  Hall  (for  young  women),  the  efficient 
administration  of  which  and  of  the  gymnasium 
constitutes  now  one  of  the  notable  and  admirable 
features  of  this  hopeful  and  growing  institution. 

Public  support  of  higher  education,  like  so 
many  other  public  activities,  is  largely  a  matter 
of  habit.  To  form  such  a  habit  may  be  difficult 
at  first,  tho  it  can  hardly  ever  be  painful;  once 
formed,  however,  it  is  soon  felt  to  be  a  natural 
function  and  is  exercised  with  satisfaction.  It  is 
not  strange  then  that  President  Patterson  should 
secure  in  1904  an  additional  yearly  appropriation 
of  $15,000,  and  in  1908  a  further  increase  of 
$20,000  per  annum,  besides  $200,000  for  build- 
ings, so  that  the  total  annual  income  from  all 
sources  reached  the  sum  of  $125,000.     Herewith 

116 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

there  had  come  such  a  widening  of  the  activity  of 
the  College  that  it  was  felt  that  the  name  College 
was  no  longer  appropriate.  The  State  College  had 
in  fact  developed  insensibly  into  a  State  Univer- 
sity. Accordingly,  President  Patterson  threw  him- 
self into  the  movement  to  bring  about  this  change 
of  name,  which  change  was  consummated  by  the 
Act  of  the  Legislature  of  1908,  whereby  was  bom 
into  the  world  the  youngest  of  the  Universities, 
the  State  University  of  Kentucky.  Since  this 
designation  came  into  conflict  with  that  of  the 
Kentucky  University  aforementioned,  the  name  of 
this  latter  was  changed  back  to  Transylvania  Uni- 
versity, an  ancient  and  honorable  and  euphonious 
appellation. 

This  inauguration  of  the  State  University  of 
Kentucky,  which  set  seal  to  the  forty  years  of 
President  Patterson's  labor  in  behalf  of  the  parent 
institution  and  marked  the  beginning  of  the  reali- 
zation of  his  lofty  ideals  and  wide-grasping  con- 
ceptions, was  also  the  signal  for  the  renewal  of 
the  attacks  for  ten  years  intermitted.  It  was  held 
by  the  Attorney  General  that  the  change  of  name 
from  "College"  to  "University"  seriously  aifected 
and  perhaps  destroyed  the  validity  of  appropria- 
tions made  to  the  University;  that  the  College  as 
a  corporation  expired  the  moment  its  name  was 
changed,  and  that  appropriations  made  for  the 
University  might  not  be  sheltered  by  the  sanc- 
tions that  guarded  those  made  to  the  Agricultural 
and  Mechanical  College.  Here  indeed  were  raised 
scruples  dark  and  nice !  To  resolve  them  Pres- 
ident Patterson  appeared,  25th  of  December,  190S, 
before    Circuit    Judge    Stout,  holding    court  in 

117 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

Frankfort,  and  in  a  masterly  argument  demon- 
strated that  the  idea  of  a  University  already  lay 
involved  in  the  original  provision  of  the  constitu- 
tive Act  of  18G2;  that  the  Agricultural  and  Me- 
chanical College,  so  far  from  being  dead,  was  very 
much  alive,  in  uncommonly  good  health  and  the 
best  of  spirits;  that  the  discontinuity  in  the  life 
of  the  seminary  was  purely  imaginary.  He  furth- 
ermore proved  that  the  still  more  delicate  doubt, 
whether  the  last  appropriation  to  the  University 
was  not  inhibited  by  Articles  49  and  50  of  the 
Constitution,  was  void  of  all  substance.  Though 
the  University  was  perhaps  at  no  time  in  serious 
danger  from  these  later  technicalities  and  dubie- 
ties, vet  it  was  a  great  relief  to  have  them  stilled 
by  he  craft  of  such  a  magician. 

Such  is  the  outward  and  visible  record  of  Pres- 
ident Patterson's  achievements  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  trust  he  has  held  since  1869.  It  is 
the  belief  of  the  present  writer  that  no  record  of 
the  same  class  is  more  admirable  or  bears  more 
unequivocal  witness  to  unwavering  fidelity  and 
signal  ability.  In  comparison  with  Harvard  and 
Yale,  and  Columbia,  and  Cornell,  and  Michigan, 
and  Wisconsin,  and  Minnesota,  and  California, 
and  a  score  of  others,  the  State  University  of 
Kentucky  may  seem  insignificant  in  attendance 
and  income,  as  well  as  in  the  variety  and  exten- 
sity  of  its  educational  and  investigative  energies. 
But  if  we  consider  the  extremely  unfavorable  con- 
ditions of  its  genesis,  and  the  unexampled  oppo- 
sition that  continually  thro  eighteen  years  threat- 
ened its  very  existence,  we  must  regard  its  survi- 

118 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

val  as  marvelous  and  its  development  as  wonder- 
ful 

But  this  record,  however  bright,  by  no  means 
tells  the  full  tale  of  Professor  Patterson's  activi- 
ties. He  has  represented  his  people  and  his  State 
on  several  occasions  of  international  importance, 
and  always  worthily.  Thus,  in  1875,  he  was 
the  Delegate  of  Kentucky  to  the  International 
Congress  of  Geographical  Science,  and  in  the 
same  year  to  the  British  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  and  was  Delegate  to 
the  same  As*sociation  in  1890.  He  was  elected 
member  of  the  Eoyal  Historical  Society  of 
Great  Britain  in  1870,  and  of  the  Society  of 
Antiquaries  of  Scotland  in  1880.  He  attended  the 
International  Congress  of  Geographical  Sciences 
in  Paris,  in  1875,  and  his  report  of  the  meeting 
was  so  highly  valued  that  the  Legislature  ordered 
10,000  copies  printed  for  distribution. 

President  Patterson  has  always  maintained  a 
lively  interest  in  European  movements,  both  social 
and  political.  His  wide,  varied,  and  accurate  his- 
torical studies  had  enlightened  his  understanding 
of  such  movements  and  weighted  his  judgments 
with  the  value  of  a  professional  publicist's.  This 
fact  was  recognized  in  discerning  circles  and  se- 
cured him  the  highly  agreeable  task  of  writing 
the  editorials  on  foreign  politics  for  the  Courier- 
Journal  from  1871  to  1875.  Among  these  was  one 
of  very  exceptional  interest,  inspired  by  the  death 
of  Napoleon  III.  His  style  of  writing  resembled 
very  much  his  style  of  speech,  being  clear,  crisp, 
precise,  and  strongly  suggestive  of  reserved  en- 
ergy.    To  the  writer    of    these   words  there  was 

119 


Fortieth  Annitersary. 

always  something  PJuropean,  something  that 
seemed  to  have  come  across  the  seas,  in  the  ac- 
cent, the  intonation,  the  structure  of  sentence, 
and  the  structure  of  thought  that  characterized 
President  Patterson,  i hough  only  recently  has  it 
come  to  my  knowledge  that  he  was  actually  born 
in  Scotland.  Many  who  have  read  that  long  series 
of  editorials  must  have  felt  vaguely  that  they  were 
in  the  presence  of  something  not  wholly  American, 
a  spirit  not  alien  nor  unkind,  but  yet  not  quite 
native  to  the  skies  that  bend  over  America. 

It  was  not  strange  then  that  President  Patter- 
son always  remained  in  close  touch  with  the  great 
personalities  and  history-makers  of  Britain.  He 
corresponded  regularly  with  the  Professor  of 
Modern  History  at  Oxford,  the  illustrious  histo- 
rian of  the  Norman  Conquest,  Dr.  Edward  Au- 
gustus Freeman,  and  this  frequent  and  elaborate 
correspondence,  which  entered  into  minute  and 
thorough-going  discussion  of  European  politics 
and  policies,  was  rich  in  pleasure  and  profit  to 
both  the  participants.  Another  of  his  correspond- 
ents, and  one  whom  he  specially  valued  and  ad- 
mired, was  Professor  John  Tyndall,  a  name  fa- 
miliar enough  to  many  readers  now,  but  which  in 
those  elder  days  fairly  filled  the  sounding  trump 
of  fame.  President  Patterson  ranked  Professor 
Tyndall  especially  high,  not  merely  as  a  savant 
and  lecturer  and  experimenter,  but  also  as  stylist 
and  converser.  1  remember  to  have  heard  him 
say  that  Tyndall's  English  was  the  raciest  he  had 
ever  heard  spoken.  This  valued  and  valuable 
acquaintance  with  the  brilliant  materialist  was 
formed  at  High  Elms,  Kent,  the  country  seat  of 

120 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

Sir  John  Lubbock,  now  Lord  Avebury,  the  dis- 
tinguisht  naturalist,  archaeologist,  and  historian 
of  Primitive  Civilization,  who  was  entertaining 
President  Patterson  and  who  introduced  him  also 
to  Dr.  Spottiswoode,  the  celebrated  mathematician, 
and  to  James  Eichard  Green,  too  early  reft  from 
his  illuminating  historical  studies.  Among  his 
other  English  friends  or  acquaintances  was  the 
Junior  Lord  of  the  Treasury  in  Mr.  Disraeli's 
]\1inistry  (1875),  Sir  James  Horn  Dalrymple  El- 
phinstone,  from  whom  he  received  most  agreeable 
attentions  in  London,  and  in  Paris  M.  Ferdinand 
Maury,  Member  of  the  Institute  of  France  and 
librarian  of  the  Imperial  Library  under  the  Sec- 
ond Empire,  who  also  showed  him  distinguished 
courtesies.  It  was  through  such  friendships  and 
relations  as  these  that  President  Patterson  main- 
tained communion  with  the  general  mind  to  an 
extent  and  degree  of  intimacy  rarely  met  with  even 
among  high-placed  men  of  culture  and  travel. 
In  conversation  with  him  one  could  not  fail  to 
perceive  and  to  feel  that  he  spoke  not  the  lan- 
guage of  Kentucky,  nor  of  America,  hut  as  it 
were  of  the  whole  Anglo-Saxon  race,  that  he  held 
the  affairs  of  the  United  States  and  of  Europe  in 
juk>ter  perspective  than  did  almost  any  of  his 
compeers.  To  this  result  his  foreign  birth  and 
lineage  did  undoubtedly  in  some  measure  con- 
tribute. It  is  to  his  honor  that  he  never  forgot 
his  native  land,  that  while  he  served  so  faithfully, 
courageously,  and  unweariedly  hio  adopted  coun- 
try', the  land  of  broad  fertile  fields  and  waving 
woodlawns  and  majestic  forests  and  sunlit  surges 
of  blue  grass,  his  heart  was  never  weaned  away 

121 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

from  the  stern  mother  that  bore  him  and  nur- 
tured him  at  her  shaggy  breast,  the  land  of  brown 
heath  and  soaring  mountain-peak,  of  mist  and 
fog  and  transient  sunbeam,  of  brakes  and  braes 
and  foaming  cataracts,  of  long-armed  friths  and 
blue-eyed  lochs  and  dells  where  the  thistle  blooms. 

This  Caledonianism  of  President  Patterson 
brought  with  it  in  some  measure  its  own  Nemesis. 
There  may  have  been  some  who  admired  the 
scholar,  the  teacher,  the  administrator,  the  logi- 
cian, the  writer,  but  who  felt  unable  to  get  very 
near  the  man,  who  thought  him  cold,  calculating, 
unsympathetic,  and  too  wholly  rational  and  pas- 
sionless. Such  a  judgment  neglects  what  we  might 
call  the  national  equation;  it  fails  to  remember 
that  President  Patterson  was  a  representative 
Scotchman  in  the  finest  fibres  of  his  being,  that 
his  involuntary  fidelity  to  his  ancestry  made  it 
irapos«ible  for  him  to  be  aught  but  a  foreign  com- 
mander, serving  with  unshakable  devotion  in  the 
anmy  of  a  native  prince.  Always  he  walked  about 
soiitary  among  the  native  forces,  among  them,  but 
not  of  them.  Yet  to  the  few  who  really  came  to 
know  his  Caledonian  heart,  he  showed  that  the 
fires  burned  beneath  the  snows,  that  in  his  bosom's 
core  he  was  kind,  tender,  generous,  compassionate, 
and  full  of  affection. 

Like  many  prominent  men  of  far  less  ability, 
President  Patterson  was  called  on  to  make  many 
addresses.  These  were  always  well  thought  out 
and  excellently  worded,  abundant  in  all  sorts  of 
exact  knowledge,  and  particularly  notable  for  ele- 
vation and  range  of  view.  Perhaps  the  most  re- 
markable  was    the    one    entitled  "Education  and 

122 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

Empire,"  which  was  delivered  in  Washington  City 
before  the  American  Association  of  Agriculture 
and  Mechanical  Colleges,  in  the  year  of  his  pres- 
idency of  that  body,  11)03.  This  address  was  by 
unanimous  consent  a  production  of  surpassing 
merit.  Recently  I  chanced  to  have  a  conversation 
with  an  able  and  eminent  official  of  the  U.  8. 
Government,  in  which  the  general  attitude  of 
President  Patterson  came  up  for  consideration. 
1  found  him  utterly  unsympathetic  and  in  fact 
sharply  opposed  to  the  President's  policy,  which 
seemed  to  him  altogether  too  ambitious  for  an 
Agi'icultural  and  Mechanical  College,  laying  alto- 
gether too  much  stress  on  general  science  and  the 
humanities,  and  not  nearly  enough  on  agriculture 
proper.  "Why,"  he  said,  "in  his  great  presidential 
address  in  1903,  which  every  one  admits  was  the 
ablest  ever  delivered  before  the  Association,  he 
did  not  give  even  one  paragraph  to  the  one  main 
object  of  the  foundation  of  such  colleges."  1 
have  quoted  this  judgment  from  a  most  unfriend- 
ly critic,  as  having  much  more  significance  than 
if  it  proceeded  from  a  sympathetic  source.  It  is 
a  question  of  point  of  view.  One  may  conceive 
narrowly  or  broadly,  humbly  or  grandly.  Pres- 
ident Patterson  chose  the  second  alternative.  Had 
there  been  already  another  State  University  in 
Kentucky,  the  stricture  just  quoted  might  have 
ben  justified.  In  that  case  there  might  have  been 
no  good  reason  for  duplicating  the  agencies  of 
instruction,  and  the  whole  development  of  the 
Agricultural  and  Mechanical  College  might  have 
been  with  propriety  directed  along  the  narrow  lines 
of  Agriculture  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.    But  such 


123 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

was  not  the  case.  There  was  no  semblance  of  a 
State  Universit}^  in  Kentucky,  save  in  the  State 
College,  and  it  wa^  the  part  of  the  highest  wisdom 
to  expand  and  develop  the  State  College  sym- 
metrically in  all  directions  until  the  citizenship 
should  behold  before  them  a  university,  strong, 
young,  vigorous,  triumphant  over  all  its  foes,  both 
without  and  within,  the  pride,  the  boast,  and  the 
hope  of  the  Commonwealth.  In  the  noble  address 
of  1903  President  Patterson  has  set  forth  his 
great  ideal  with  persuasive  eloquence.  It  is  a 
splendid  plea  for  mind  and  the  culture  of  mind 
as  the  indispensable  agents  in  the  organization  and 
evolution  of  civilization  particularly  in  its  gov- 
ernmental and  social  aspects.  It  shows  the  largest 
comprehension  of  the  problems  that  confront 
humanity  in  the  twentieth  century  and  high  ap- 
preciation of  the  role  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  race 
is  called  on  to  play  in  the  solution  of  those  prob- 
lems. Certainly  no  other  people  have  addressed 
themselvas  with  so  much  earnestness  or  with  so 
much  success  to  the  great  task  of  reconciling  lib- 
erty with  order,  of  substituting  evolution  for 
revolution,  of  exemplifying  the  conception  of  the 
social,  civic,  and  political  system  a3  a  tree  rooted 
unshakably  in  the  rich  loam  of  bygone  days,  yet 
putting  forth  new  nurture  continually  on  the  top- 
most boughs.  Both  this  address  and  the  still  more 
learned  address  to  the  Law  Classes  on  the  History 
of  Language  show  the  strivings  of  a  well-grounded 
racial  and  national  pride  and  a  keen  sense  of  the 
superiority  of  Anglo-Saxon  character  and  achieve- 
ments. The  spectacle  of  British  Empire  is  cer- 
tainly inspiring  as  perhaps  naught  else  political 

124 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

or  civil  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  Druid's 
prophecy  to  Boadicea : 

"Regions  Caesar  never  knew, 
Thy  posterity  shall  sway," 

has  been  fulfilled  tenfold.  When  we  add  the 
Colossus  of  the  North,  the  United  States,  it  is  seen 
that  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  easily  dwarfs  all  others 
boith  in  performance  and  in  promise,  and  it  be- 
comes natural  to  think  of  it  (with  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling) as  the  modern  Israel,  as  the  chosen  people 
of  the  God  of  Civilization,  and  of  all  others  as 
mere  "Gentiles,'*  "or  lesser  breeds  without  the 
Law."  The  German-Englishman,  Houston  Stew- 
art Chamberlain,  would  display  a  little  more  gen- 
erosity by  including  the  English  under  the  general 
designation  of  Germans !  The  enthusiasm  and 
intense  racial  consciousness  of  the  Briton  may  well 
be  pardoned.  The  respect  and  even  awe  with 
which  the  name  Englishman  is  mentioned  on  the 
continent  of  Europe  is  no  undeserved  tribute  to 
the  national  character  and  accomplishments,  and 
when  any  subtle  dangers  threaten  to  assail  that 
character,  it  is  well  that  science  should  arouse  her- 
self to  meet  and  repel  them.  It  is  not  then  in 
correction,  but  rather  in  supplementation  of  the 
estimates  of  such  glorifiers  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
that  one  might  observe  that  civilization  is  a  highly 
complex  product,  and  there  seem  to  be  certain  very 
important  elements  that  find  their  finest  expres- 
sion nowhere  in  Anglo-Saxondom,  but  rather  an 
the  continent  of  Europe.  The  reader  will  at  once 
think  of  art  in  its  many  forms,  as  sculpture  and 
architecture  and    painting    and    music,  to  all  of 

125 


Fortieth  Anniversarv. 

which  the  contributions  even  of  the  South  Euro- 
pean, with  his  "ephemeral  ideals"  (to  quote  from 
Education  and  Empire)  have  been  of  supreme  and 
matchless  importance.  But  not  to  dwell  on  the 
obvious,  it  may  be  further  affirmed  that  Science, 
Learning,  and  Philosophy  have  been  conceived  on 
the  continent  in  a  way  sufficiently  different  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon  to  justify  its  concurrent  exist- 
ence. There  is,  in  fact,  heard  distinctly  on  the 
continent  a  certain  upper  harmonic,  a  certain 
overtone  that  is  not  often  recognized  so  clearly  on 
the  Islands.  A  few  illustrations  will  make  this 
plain.  Newton  and  Leibnitz  invented  the  In- 
finitesimal Calculus  independently.  With  the 
former  it  wa.^  and  remained  till  the  last  a  mere 
instrument  for  the  solution  of  mechanical  prob- 
lems; as  a  self-contained  mathematical  doctrine 
it  never  came  to  birth  in  his  thoughts,  he  divulged 
it  only  to  a  few  intimate  friends,  in  his  great  work 
Principia  Philosopliiae  NaturaUs  he  studiously 
suppressed  all  allusion  to  his  use  of  it,  and  not 
for  many  years  did  he  discover  his  invention  to 
the  world.  But  Leibnitz  from  the  first  was  con- 
cerned with  the  method  as  a  method,  as  a  doctrine 
of  pure  mathematics  and  full  of  philosophic  im- 
port ;  he  gave  his  thoughts  freely  to  the  world  and 
set  up  a  mathematical  movement  that  speedily 
reached  the  most  brilliant  and  extensive  results. 
The  point  is  that  Newton's  interest  lay  wholly  in 
the  applications,  while  Leibnitz  was  primarily  inter- 
ested in  the  method  itself.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Leibnitzian  school  far  outstripped  the  Newtonian 
in  the  applications  as  well  as  in  the  theory  of  the 
Calculus.    Consider  also  the  case  of  David  Hume. 


126 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

a  metaphysician  unsurpassed  in  subtlety  and  pro- 
fundity. At  twenty-eight  he  produced  his  Treatise 
of  Human  Nature,  an  exhaustless  well  of  the  deep- 
est thought,  from  which  the  generations  follow- 
ing have  not  yet  ceased  to  drink.  The  work  was 
unsuccessful,  ''it  fell  dead  horn  from  the  press." 
What  did  Hume  do?  He  practically  abandoned 
philosophy !  He  wrote  his  far  inferior  "Philo- 
sophical Essays"  (afterwards  entitled  An  Inquiry 
Concerning  the  Human  Understanding) an  attempt 
to  popularize  the  Treatise,  and  in  the  "Advertise- 
ment" thereto  he  even  disclaimed  his  own  great 
Treastise,  desiring  that  the  Essays  "may  alone  be 
regarded  as  containing  my  sentiments  and  prin- 
ciples." He  then  turned  his  attention  to  History. 
Compare  this  want  of  high  seriousness  and  of  devo- 
tion to  philosophy  as  philosophy  with  the  life-long 
ardor  and  singleness  of  purpose  of  Descartes,  Kant, 
Spinoza,  and  the  other  illustrious  Continentals. 
Or  set  Bacon  by  the  side  of  Galilei  or  Giordano 
Bruno,  or  Locke  alongside  of  Leibnitz,  and  observe 
the  proportions.  Once  more,  the  illustrious  Scotch 
mathematician,  Peter  Guthrie  Tait,  says  of  his 
equally  illustrious  compatriot  Maquorne  Eankine, 
that  he  wasted  some  of  his  earlier  years  on  the 
Theory  of  Numbers.  But  Gauss  called  the  same 
theory  the  Queen  of  Mathematics  and  Mathematics 
the  Queen  of  the  Sciences,  and  the  highest  analytic 
powers  of  France  and  particularly  of  Germany 
have  been  devoted  to  its  fruitful  development. 
Such  instances  might  be  multiplied  indefinitely, 
but  enough.  There  is  on  the  continent  a  certain 
idealism  in  culture  that  is  not  found  elsewhere  in 
equal   degree.     When   Fourier   reporting   to   the 

127 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

Academy  regretted  that  Jaeobi  had  devoted  his 
great  powers  to  the  Theory  of  Elliptic  Functions 
rather  than  to  the  Theory  of  Heat,  the  latter  re- 
plied in  a  letter  to  Legendre  that  a  philosopher 
like  Mr.  F,  "should  have  known  that  the  sole  end 
of  Science  is  the  honor  of  the  human  spirit,  and 
that  under  this  aspect  a  question  of  number  counts 
for  as  much  as  a  question  of  the  system  of  the 
world."  Such  has  been  the  distinctive  attitude  of 
the  continental  thinker,  which  it  would  be  very 
disastrous  for  all  men  to  assume,  but  might  also 
prove  unfortunate  for  all  men  to  abandon  Let 
then  the  Anglo-Saxon  continue  to  play  his  leading 
part  in  the  drama  of  Civilization,  but  let  him  not 
forget  that  other  more  airy  roles  are  essential  to 
the  representation. 

The  personal  characteristics  of  President  Patter- 
son are  already  well-known  to  many  readers  of  this 
Appreciation.  Throughout  his  long  life  he  seems 
to  have  been  remarkably  at  one  with  himself,  un- 
shaken by  such  tempests  as  sometimes  cleave  our 
hearts  asunder  and  enkindle  war  in  our  members. 
Smoothly,  roundly,  symmetrically  his  nature  has 
gone  on  growing  steadily.  His  virtues  are  mainly 
those  that  belong  to  the  dominant  class;  the  more 
preeminent  lean  decidedly  toward  the  civic  rather 
than  the  personal  type,  and  in  this  as  in  every- 
thing else  he  is  true  to  his  race,  to  his  stock,  to 
his  fatherland. 

When  Antonius  Pius,  that  prince  among  Em- 
perors, unsurpassed  in  mingled  majesty  and  beauty 
of  character,  among  the  sons  of  men,  lay  at  the 
half-opened  doorway  of  another  world,  with  all  the 
tciTors  of  the  tremendous  transit  gathered  about 
128 


Pres.  Jas.  K.  Patterson. 

him,  the  captain  of  the  guard  came  to  ask  for  the 
day's  watchword.  AEquanimitas,  replied  the 
dying  Emperor  and  turned  his  eyes  away  towards 
the  slowly  unfolding  portals.  If  asked  to  name  the 
central  stem,  the  trunk-virtue  in  the  character  of 
President  Patterson,  one  could  hardly  do  better 
than  to  repeat  the  imperial  watchword,  equanimity. 
Like  the  great  Governor  General  of  India  whose 
more  excellent  qualities  he  measurably  reproduced 
he  has  never  been  disturbed  in  this  noble  even- 
mindedness  by  any  extreme  or  caprice  of  fortune. 
Had  anything  been  able  to  ruffle  this  majestic 
calm,  it  would  have  been  the  untimely  separation 
(in  1895)  from  his  son,  Wm.  Andrew  Patterson, 
a  youth  of  extraordinary  promise.  The  devotion  of 
President  Patterson  to  his  brilliant  boy  went  far 
beyond  the  wide  limits  within  which  even  a 
father's  affection  is  wont  to  move  and  was  a  lovely 
and  beautiful  thing  to  behold.  Since  that  so  pre- 
mature bereavement  President  Patterson  has 
walked  as  beholding  the  invisible.  But  though  a 
heavy  and  unlifting  shadow  has  fallen  on  their 
path,  yet  neither  he  nor  his  most  fit  and  admirable 
helpmeet  has  thereby  been  saddened  into  gloom 
or  moroseness.  The  ancestral  religion  not  less 
than  so  many  ancestral  qualities  of  body  and  of 
mind,  of  intellect  and  of  temperament,  has  de- 
scended upon  President  Patterson  with  the  con- 
straining insistence  of  inheritance.  Not  all  his 
wide  wanderings  in  the  realm  of  science  both 
physical  and  metaphysical,  both  geological  and 
biological,  not  all  his  rich  gleanings  in  the  fields 
of  philology  both  ancient  and  modern,  not  all  his 
deep  researches  in  transmigration  of  peoples  and 

129 


Fortieth  Anniversary. 

the  transformations  of  myths,  rituals,  and  customs, 
though  they  have  refined  his  tenets,  broadened  his 
sympathies,  and  enlightened  his  judgments,  have 
ever  availed  to  becloud  the  eye  of  his  hereditary 
faith  or  to  shake  his  loyality  to  the  principles  and 
practice  of  the  historic  Church  of  Scotland. — A 
clear-eyed,  broad-browed,  calm-visaged,  keen- 
thoughted,  large-minded,  single-souled  man;  fer- 
tile in  expedients,  master  of  every  situation,  firm 
in  resolution,  tenacious  of  purpose,  patient,  un- 
wearied, always  pressing  onward;  a  spirit  from 
afar,  too  deeply  saturated  with  the  hues  of  its  own 
home  to  take  on  the  colors  of  its  new  environment ; 
kind-hearted,  benevolent,  beneficent,  and  capable 
of  intense  affection,  yet  too  thoroughly  devoted  to 
great  public  interests  to  give  more  than  occasional 
attention  to  merely  personal  relations  and  con- 
cerns— an  evergreen  pine  born  in  Ben  Nevis'  top. 
rooted  in  the  rocks,  braving  the  tempest  and  the 
torrent  and  the  thunderbolt,  always  the  same 
whether  sheltering  the  birds  of  spring  or  whisper- 
ing with  the  winds  of  summer  or  upbearing  the 
snows  of  winter,  immovable,  immutable,  alone — 
such  seems  the  Father  of  the  University  of  Ken- 
tuclc}^ 

0  well  for  him  whose  will  is  strong ! 
He  suffers,  but  he  will  not  suffer  long; 
He  suffers,  but  he  cannot  suffer  wrong : 
For  him  nor  moves  the  loud  world's  random  mock, 
Nor  all  Calamity's  hugest  waves  confound. 
Who  seems  a  promontory  of  rock, 
That,  compass'd  round  with  turbulent  sound. 
In  middle  ocean  meets  the  surging  shock. 
Tempest-buffeted,  citadel-crowned. 
130  : 


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